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Today we are happy to announce the release of a new version of StereoCore™ PhotoLog. The new feature of this version is project merging. Project merging is the import of data from one StereoCore™ PhotoLog project into another one. This enables users of StereoCore™ PhotoLog to work in parallel.
As an example, consider a team of ten loggers who want to log a hypothetical borehole. First photographs of the core tray are taken and undistorted, then each of the ten loggers can start logging immediately. In the meantime an assistant can mark the undistorted photographs with segments and core blocks (depth registering the core). When the loggers are finished with data gathering, the logged data can be merged with the depth registered project and the data can then be depth registered. Finally, all of the logs for a single borehole can be combined into one project by merging them in one at a time, creating a final visual record of the logging. By keeping copies of the individual logs it becomes possible to trace the entire logging process, which makes auditing even more transparent. Project merging is a little bit complex to set up, so we encourage customers who want to try it out to contact us via email (support@stereocore.net) and we'll walk you through it. Another feature of this version of StereoCore™ PhotoLog is the ability to change the project Log Format. This allows the user to undistort a set of photographs and use them in multiple logging situations with the data cleanly separated according to the tasks that the user is performing. Lastly we've included multiple minor bug fixes in this version of StereoCore™ PhotoLog. Happy Logging! David Orpen StereoCore™ PhotoLog Lead Programmer
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Another minor update to the program today. We've tried to clean up the depth log and the user interface for placement of core blocks. Full details are available in the help file. There have been a couple of minor bug fixes as well - things like getting the mouse scroll and zoom working a little bit more smoothly.
Happy Friday :) Best regards - Dave Orpen StereoCore™ PhotoLog Lead Programmer Just a very minor update to the program, I implemented an autosave before backup.
Best regards David Orpen StereoCore™ PhotoLog Lead Programmer Today we have released a new version of StereoCore™ PhotoLog. The new program contains a lot of updates, bug fixes and new features. The major new feature which we are rather proud of, is the ability to import logging data into a StereoCore™ PhotoLog project. This may seem like a small thing but in fact we believe that it's going to be a game-changer. What it means is that with nothing but the photographs of the core trays and the logging data originally recorded, it will be possible to audit a core logging project which has already been completed. This means that core logging data can be validated even years after the logging was done, when the actual core has long since weathered.  Lithology, structure and other geotech data can all be imported. A basic sketch of how to do it is included in the help file, we are working hard to update the documentation to be more comprehensive. We have worked particularly hard on structure import, so that α, β angle pairs can be imported as well as dip and dip direction values (dips and dip directions also require that you have a borehole path survey on hand). This means that data from downhole survey instruments such as televiewer data can be imported into a StereoCore™ PhotoLog project and compared with data logged in the core shed, and also visually compared to the core itself, thus enabling one to not only audit logging done in the core shed but also to determine the degree of confidence to be placed in the ATV data. Another noticeable new feature of the program is the new "Logs Tab", which provides the user with an overview of all the data contained in a StereoCore™ PhotoLog project. You can double click on a row in the logs tab and be taken directly to the image containing that data, so you can easily check data that you're interested in.  Finally, we have added two buttons to the toolbar, the "Calc Stats" button and the "Save" button.  Save does what you'd expect - it saves the project. Calc Stats recalculates all the depths, RQDs etc for the project. What happened was this: we discovered that StereoCore™ PhotoLog is, or rather was, quite slow when working with large projects containing large amounts of data. We tracked the problem down to two things, one was the autosaving code which we run every time the user changes something while entering data, and the other was the depth registration code which we also update frequently (e.g. when the user places a segment in the image). After a bit of thought, we decided that for the moment we will rather allow the user to control those things, since while logging one really doesn't need to necessarily have depths and so forth updating live, and if the user wants to check that the program has captured the data correctly then "Calc Stats" takes only a very short time to run.
Also included in this update are numerous bug fixes. We did unfortunately discover a bug relating to our backup routines. The program has now been updated and the bug has been fixed, we have also contacted all of our existing customers and alerted them to the problem. Fortunately it seems that nobody was affected by it, but these kinds of bugs do crop up from time to time, and we believe that the mark of an ethical software company is to be open and honest with our customers. Best regards, The StereoCore™ PhotoLog Team. Abstract: The accuracy of image based length and angle measurements made using StereoCore™ PhotoLog 3 was tested by processing a set of artificially generated photographs. The simulated core segments in the images were of known length, and the simulated structures had known (α, β) angles. The measured values were compared with the known values and the errors were calculated. The error data was used to calculate summary statistics showing that in this bench test the length of core segments was measured with a mean error of 3mm and plane poles were measured with a mean error of 4.0°, or 3.3° if α angles less than 5° are excluded. Introduction As part of our internal quality assurance process for StereoCore™ PhotoLog, we bench test the software to make sure that it is returning accurate measurements. This article presents the method and results of the second bench test for StereoCore™ PhotoLog 3. Bench testing of any measurement tool is done to evaluate its accuracy and precision. Accuracy is a measure of how close the measurement is to the actual real-world value, and precision is a measure of the measurement's repeatability. See this Wikipedia article for more details. In order to test this, we take a number of measurements of known quantities with the tool, and compare the known quantities with the measurements. In the case of StereoCore™ PhotoLog we are interested specifically in core segment length measurements and structure angle measurements. Once we have the actual and measured quantities we can calculate a number of descriptive statistics which give us some idea of how well StereoCore™ PhotoLog can be expected to measure lengths and angles. Bench Testing Method We are attempting to test how well StereoCore™ PhotoLog measures lengths or core segments and angles of core structures. The most straightforward way of testing this would be to take photographs of core segments and structures with known lengths and angles, and compare them to the values measured by StereoCore™ PhotoLog. Unfortunately measuring actual core segment lengths and structure angles with sufficient accuracy for a meaningful bench test is difficult, and especially in the quantities needed. To circumvent this problem, we decided to artificially generate the photographs, and simulate structures and core segments within the artificial core trays (see Figure 1). To remove the element of human bias the core segment lengths and the structure plane pole directions are randomized during the generation of the images, and an Excel file is generated containing the precise lengths and angles measured.  Figure 1: Artificial photograph showing simulated core segments and structures. The artificial photographs have simulated lens distortion and were taken from a randomized camera position as well, to more accurately simulate the kind of conditions that StereoCore™ PhotoLog is intended to be used in. The generated photographs were undistorted and calibrated as per StereoCore™ PhotoLog standard operating procedure, and then segment lines and structures were marked on each structure. Once "logging" was complete, the data was exported to Excel. The measured data was then compared to the original data and errors were calculated. Randomizing the data A concern that was raised when we last published bench test results was whether or not the input data was properly generated in such a way that the instrument would be fully tested. Specifically, the question of the distribution of α angles in the test sample was raised. In the original bench test we were concerned to test that the program would return reasonable results for any combination of (α,β) measurements. Accordingly, the structure data was generated so that the plane poles would fall evenly on a hemisphere as illustrated in Figure 2. However, this distribution does not have an even distribution of α angles, as shown in Figure 3, so for the second bench test we generated the data so that there would be an even distribution of α angles, as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5.  Figure 2: Pole distribution for the first bench test.  Figure 3: α distribution for the first bench test.  Figure 4: Pole distribution for the second bench test.  Figure 5: α distribution for the second bench test. Results Length Measurements Mean absolute error was 3.1mm with a standard deviation of 2.0mm. Mean relative error was 0.6% with a standard deviation of 0.4%. 92.7% of the data was within 6mm and 100.0% of the data was within 10mm. A chart of the measured absolute error is shown in Figure 6.  Figure 6: Length measurement error. Angle Measurements In the table below we present two sets of statistics for angle measurements here, the one set includes α angles of less than 5°, and the other excludes them.  Table 1: Summary statistics for angle measurements. The really important columns of Table 1 are the ones labelled "Angle Diff". They show the summary statistics for the angular error between the measured and actual plane poles. Again we can look at cumulative relative frequencies for the data as well. For α angle measurements, 73.3% of measurements are within 2° and 91.3% are within 5°. For all data, the pole angle difference is less than 5° for 74.0% of the data and less than 10° for 98.7% of the data. After removing the structures with α < 5°, the pole angle difference is less than 5° for 74.7% of the data and less than 10° for 100.0% of the data.  Figure 7: α angle errors.  Figure 8: β angle errors. Something to take note of in Figure 8 is the strange shape of the histogram. Why are there so many β measurements with a high error? What's actually going on is that the β angle becomes harder to measure as α tends towards 90°. This is because the elliptical trace of the structure where it intersects the core barrel becomes closer to a circle. Since the β angle is defined relative to the semi-major axis of the elliptical trace, when there is no clear semi-major axis, measuring the β angle becomes impossible. Since the data for this particular bench test included lots of plane poles with a high α, naturally the β measurements were more varied. However, all is not lost, because it is the (α,β) pair that is important after all - the two measurements together define the plane pole. When we calculate the angle differences between the actual plane poles and measured plane poles, we find a much more satisfactory situation, as illustrated in Figure 9.  Figure 9: Pole angle error. As you can see, most plane poles are measured to within 10°, and excluding α angles of less than 5° removes the outliers, although there are only 4 measurements in 300 that were out by more than 10°, so it may be that there's a case for not even bothering with excluding those measurements with α < 5°. Caveats As always there are a few things to bear in mind with this data. This is artificial data and the structures that one sees in the core shed rarely look as pleasantly elliptical as the ones in the generated photographs. Conclusion Lengths were on average measured to within 3mm and 93% of length measurements were within 6mm. For angles the situation is slightly more complicated because it is the plane pole measurement that we're interested in, i.e. the (α,β) pair rather than the individual α and β values. Looking at the angle between the measured and actual plane poles, the mean measurement error was 4.0°, and 98.7% of measured plane poles were within 10° of the actual poles, in fact only 4 measurements out of 300, all with very low α angles - less than 2° (as measured by StereoCore™ PhotoLog) had angle errors greater than 10°. Looking at α and β separately, the mean measurement error for α angles was 1.5°, with a standard deviation of 1.8°. Compare this with β, where the mean measurement error was 10.8° and the standard deviation was 21°. Despite the large errors in β, the plane poles were still measured accurately to within 10°. This is explained by the fact that as α gets close to 90°, β becomes much more difficult to measure but also has less of an effect on the direction of the plane pole. It also serves to drive home the point that (α, β) measurements must be considered as a pair. The result of this bench test shows that StereoCore™ PhotoLog measures both lengths and angles with a reasonable degree of accuracy and precision. David Orpen StereoCore™ PhotoLog Lead Programmer You can download a pdf copy of this article here: 
Hi :) We've released a new version of StereoCore™ PhotoLog today. It's largely bug fixes.
Changes:
The StereoCore™ PhotoLog Team We're releasing a major update to StereoCore™ PhotoLog today, including what we feel are some really useful new features. At the same time, we are taking StereoCore™ PhotoLog 3 out of beta. This means that as of today, StereoCore™ PhotoLog 3 is the officially supported version of the program. Customers who are currently using StereoCore™ PhotoLog 2 will continue to be supported, so we are not abandoning you.
The major new features of StereoCore™ PhotoLog 3 which were added in the past few weeks are log formats and map grids. In addition, the template system has been heavily revised to make it even more flexible and user friendly. A number of bugs have been fixed and the user interface has been polished. Log formats are containers for all the data definitions that one would like to share between StereoCore projects. A logging programme would generally define one log format to be used throughout the programme. When you create a project, you specify what log format it should use. This means that the project is immediately set up with the relevant frames, templates, lookup tables and map grids that you want it to have. Map grids are a part of the log format. They are intended to represent the various coordinate grids that are used at a mine. For example, many mines use grids based off WGS84, the GPS datum. Mines may have a mine grid that is used for determining borehole collar coordinates. Survey instruments may use magnetic North or True North as a reference. In StereoCore™ PhotoLog, the main purposes of map grids are:
Templates have been revised as well. Multiple template columns may now reference a single lookup table. This means that for example, if the list of rock-types of interest to the logger is updated, then all template columns that reference that list will automatically be updated too. Finally, the StereoCore™ PhotoLog help manual has had a complete revision, with full details of all the new features added. The new features will also be described in a series of planned blog posts. Best regards, The StereoCore™ PhotoLog Team. Hi :)
Minor update to the program today. Mainly there's been some behind the scenes work done on templates, one new feature that's recently been added is the ability to copy whole tables of codes and descriptors into a template column from Excel, which should take a large amount of the pain out of the template creation process. Templates are currently undergoing heavy revision, so expect more updates soon :) Best regards The StereoCore™ PhotoLog Team Hi :)
We had an issue reported with editing the core block depth when placing core blocks in the images, so here's a fix in Version 3.0.35 Beta today, the update is available on the downloads page. To install simply download it and run the msi file, it will install over the top of the previous version and should preserve all your settings. Best regards The StereoCore™ PhotoLog Team StereoCore™ PhotoLog 3 is available as a beta version for download today. (See http://www.stereocore.net/downloads.html)
There are still a few features which need polishing but largely the program is complete.
Best regards The StereoCore™ PhotoLog Team. |
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