The orientation distribution of fibres is relevant to the properties of a number of different kinds of fibrous materials from many fields like biology and engineering, including short fibre reinforced composites. The Persistence of Vision Raytracer (PoV-Ray) is a program for creating photorealistic images using raytracing. We discuss a sort of ``creative misuse'' of this program in science, because it was originally developed as an artistic software. However, the ability to create virtual images of virtual parts, test the image recognition software that is used to measure the fibre orientation distribution, and compare the results with the known distibution is a huge step forward. In this article the focus is on slicing/photometry, but computed-tomography-like images or microscope images could be produced as well and used to test segmentation and skeletonization algorithms.
1. Abràmoff, M. D., Magalhães, P. J., and Ram, S. J. Image processing with imagej. Biophotonics International, 2004, 11(7), 36–42.
2. Grünewald, S. Performance-Based Design of Self-Compacting Fibre Reinforced Concrete. Ph.D. thesis, Technische Universiteit Delft, 2004. URL http://repository. tudelft.nl/view/ir/uuid:07a817aa-cba1-4c93-bbed-40a5645cf0f1/ (accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
3. Bronstein, I. N., Semendjajew, K. A., Musiol, G., and Muehlig, H. Handbook of Mathematics. Springer, 5th edition, 2007.
4. Herrmann, H. and Eik, M. Some comments on the theory of short fibre reinforced materials. Proc. Estonian Acad. Sci., 2011, 60, 179–183.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3176/proc.2011.3.06
5. R Development Core Team. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria, 2011. URL http://www.R-project.org (accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
6. Sekhon, J. S. Matching: Multivariate and Propensity Score Matching with Balance Optimization, 2010. URL http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=Matching. R package version 4.7-11 (accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
7. Delignette-Muller, M. L., Pouillot, R., Denis, J.-B., and Dutang, C. Fitdistrplus: Help to Fit of a Parametric Distribution to Non-Censored or Censored Data, 2010. R package version 0.1-3.
8. Venables, W. N. and Ripley, B. D. Modern Applied Statistics with S. Springer, New York, fourth edition, 2002.
9. Stephenson, A. G. evd: Extreme value distributions. R News, 2002, 2(2), 31–32. URL http://CRAN.R-project.org/doc/Rnews/ (accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
10. Pouillot, R. and Delignette-Muller, M.-L. Evaluating variability and uncertainty in microbial quantitative risk assessment using two r packages. Int. J. Food Microbiol., 2010, 142(3), 330–340.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2010.07.011
11. Adler, D. and Murdoch, D. rgl: 3D Visualization Device System (OpenGL), 2010. URL http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rgl. R package version 0.91 (accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
12. Wuertz, D. et al., and see the SOURCE file. fMultivar: Multivariate Market Analysis, 2009. URL http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=fMultivar. R package version 2100.76 (accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
13. Dimitriadou, E., Hornik, K., Leisch, F., Meyer, D., and Weingessel, A. e1071: Misc Functions of the Department of Statistics (e1071), TU Wien, 2011. URL http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=e1071. R package version 1.5-25 (accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
14. Poncet, P. modeest: Mode Estimation, 2010. URL http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=modeest. R package version 1.14 (accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
15. Persistence of Vision Pty. Ltd. Persistence of Vision Raytracer (Version 3.6). Persistence, Retrieved from http://www.povray.org/download/ (computer software, accessed 2 Dec. 2011).
