mtsmooth(1)                 General Commands Manual                mtsmooth(1)



NAME
       mtsmooth - to smooth a model of MTs

SYNOPSIS
       mtsmooth

DESCRIPTION
       Mtsmooth will take a model of tracked microtubules and smooth the tra-
       jectory of each MT independently.  It will make a much nicer model for
       presentation than any kind of transformations will.  However, it will
       not necessarily preserve the spacing between MTs on any given section.
       Such a smoothed model should thus NOT be used for any kind of analysis
       that depends on the separations between MTs.

       The program operates by considering each point of each MT in turn.  It
       fits a polynomial to the nearest N points to that point in the MT,
       where N is a number specified by the user.  (More precisely, it fits a
       polynomial to X coordinates as a function of Z, and a separate polyno-
       mial to the Y coordinates as a function of Z.)  It replaces the given
       point with the coordinates of the fitted polynomial at that position in
       Z.  The order of the polynomials (1 for a straight line, 2 for a para-
       bola, etc.,) is also chosen by the user.

       Entries to the program:

       Name of input model file

       Name of output model file

       Number of points to fit polynomials to, and the order of the polynomi-
       als.  Fitting to 5 or 7 points, with an order of 2, is recommended.

       Minimum object length for fitting polynomials of the chosen order;
       objects shorter than this will be fit with a simple straight line.  A
       value of 5 is recommended for this parameter.

HISTORY
       Written by David Mastronarde, 1/13/93

BUGS
       Email bug reports to mast at colorado dot edu.



IMOD                                 5.2.0                         mtsmooth(1)