An algorithm to aid varve counting and measurement from thin-sections

An algorithm has been implemented to count and measure laminations from digital images of petrographic thin-sections. Boundaries and limits of laminations are first marked manually using imaging software. These marks are then exported to a workable format output file. Using the output file, the algorithm extracts the relevant information for lamination counts and thickness measurements along one or more parallel vertical lines. Compared to manual counts, the use of the algorithm improves the accuracy of measurements and speeds up the process. The method requires tools commonly available in most laboratories, i.e., a digital camera or a flat bed scanner with transparency capability and a desktop computer with 64 MB of RAM. From the algorithm, two utilities are implemented in Visual Basic for Applications and Fortran to be used on both Apple Macintosh and a PC-compatible, with Adobe^® Photoshop^®.