Processing FT-IR imaging data for morphology visualization

Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) imaging yields large volumes of spatiall y specific spectral data in a short time. While chemical information about a specific sample area is a goal, complete morphological visualization simi lar to that obtained by optical microscopy is desirable. To obtain morpholo gical images from this large data volume with the highest possible fidelity , specific techniques are required. However, in general, fast FT-IR imaging (3-5 min of collection time) leads to noisy morphological images due to ha rdware limitations. The data can be transformed by using transformations to eliminate noise. Image display techniques and filters can then be used to further refine, display, and carry out quantitative morphological analysis. This paper classifies various techniques and demonstrates their applicabil ity to FT-IR absorbance image analysis.