Pendent Drop ImageJ plugin

pendent drop

Pendent drop profile integration and fitting

This plug-in allows for interactive or automated adjustment of a profile to an image of a pendent drop. The surface tension, volume and surface associated with this profile can then be obtained.

The source code of this software is hosted on github and archived by Zenodo

An article describing the software in more detail was published in the open access Journal of Open Research Software : A. Daerr and A. Mogne, Pendent_Drop: An ImageJ Plugin to Measure the Surface Tension from an Image of a Pendent Drop. Journal of Open Research Software, 4: e3 (2016), DOI: 10.5334/jors.97

Context

The pendent drop method is commonly used to measure surface tensions of liquids. It consists in analysing the shape of a drop hanging typically from a capillary tube and about to detach (sometimes the inverse situation of a bubble forming at the bottom of a liquid is preferred, or that of a sessile drop or bubble). The shape is very sensitive to the unknown interfacial tension. The drop profile is described by only one non-dimensional parameter (tip radius over capillary length), although in practice five dimensional parameters can be adjusted within this plug-in: tip position and curvature, tilt of symetry axis and capillary length. The surface tension is calculated from the latter if the density difference is given.

For more information see the included PDF documentation (Plugins -> Drop Analysis -> About Pendent Drop)

Installation

The latest stable version is uploaded to the Fiji update site http://sites.imagej.net/Daerr/

Follow the procedure described on the Fiji wiki at http://fiji.sc/How_to_follow_a_3rd_party_update_site to add that site to Fiji’s list and install the plugin.

I do not recommend using the git version, simply because it may be in an unusable state for long periods during rewrites. If you nevertheless insist on trying the latest version under development, check the commit history and use either maven or fiji+jar to compile and package the plugin for you.

Author, copyright, distribution policy and disclaimer

Written by Adrian Daerr

This plugin is distributed under the GNU General Public Licence, version 3. The licencing text can be found on the site of the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/

If you require another licence please contact the author or his employer.

THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. THE PROGRAM IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

Rollback

As of writing there is no mechanism in Fiji to roll your plugin back to a previous version once you have updated it. Recognising though that it is crucial, when trying to reproduce scientific measurements, to work with the original version, I provide here a list of old versions of the pendent drop plugin. Note that these can of course be build from the source by checking out the desired version. Simply download the jar file to the plugins directory of Fiji.

Last modified: 11 Feb 2017