Fyzikální ústav Akademie věd ČR

CrysTBox - Crystallographic Toolbox


Navigation: CrysTBox HomediffractGUIringGUIcellViewer

What is CrysTBox

CrysTBox (Crystallographic Toolbox) is a set of automated tools which should help crystallographers and electron microscopists with their everydays work. Right now, it consists of three tools - two instruments for an automated analysis of electron diffraction patterns (diffractGUI and ringGUI) and one tool for visualization (cellViewer). Plugin for Gatan DigitalMicrograph included.

News

2016-11-30 CrysTBox has spread to 60 countries
2016-01-26 CrysTBox Server 1.08 (build 0039)
  • news in cellViewer: IPF and stereographic projection added
  • news in diffractGUI: manual adjustment of detected spots
  • news in ringGUI: manual adjustment of ring centre and background removal, multi-phase analysis
2015-10-26 CrysTBox Server 1.07 (build 0034)
  • first public release with three tools available - cellViewer, diffractGUI and ringGUI

CrysTBox Tools

A brief description of the individual tools and their functionalities can be found below. Generally, the accepted file formats are .DM3, .DM4, .TIFF, .JPG, .PNG etc. for the image data while the sample material can be specified using .CIF and .CELL files.
cellViewer - visualization tool
  • two interactive views can show:
    • direct space (e.g. unit cell)
    • reciprocal space (spot diffraction)
    • stereographic projection
    • inverse pole figure (IPF)
  • can visualize results of diffractGUI
  • can calculate TEM holder tilts needed to achieve desired zone axis
  • offers crystallographic calculator
diffractGUI - spot/disk diffraction analysis
  • can process SAED, CBED, nanodiffraction, HRTEM
  • automatically determines sample orientation (zone axis)
  • identifies individual diffraction spots
  • measures interplanar distances and angles
  • picometric precision (details in [1] and [2])
  • results can be visualized by cellViwer
  • fast, precise and effortless
  • helpful in camera calibration
ringGUI - ring diffraction analysis
  • automatically identifies depicted rings using Miller indices
  • determines sample material from list of candidate materials given by user
  • image enhancement for more representative and readable results
  • fast, precise and effortless
  • helpful in camera calibration

Video Tutorials

Video tutorials showing how to work with the toolbox are available here. You can see one-minute illustrative videos as well as an 18-minute tutorial covering basic controls and abilities of diffractGUI, ringGUI and cellViewer.

How to get CrysTBox

If you would like to download CrysTBox, please fill in this form.
CrysTBox is implemented in MATLAB and is freely available for non-commercial purposes in form of a standalone application installer. Since our institute has educational license for MATLAB, the toolbox can not be used for commercial purposes. Complete license statement can be found here.

System Requirements

The installers are normally built for Windows platform in 32-bit and 64-bit version. As the software relies on MATLAB Compiler Runtime, the hardware requirements are generally expected to match the requirements of MATALB R2014b: 1GB RAM, 2GB of a disk space, no specific requirements on graphic card. A GPU with 1GB memory supporting OpenGL 3.3 is recommended, however CrysTBox can use a software emulation.

Installation and troubleshooting

The installation procedure should be quite simple and intuitive. If not or if some troubles appear, you may find some help here.

Publications

Here you can find some publications about CrysTBox. References and BiBTex entries can be generated in the application main menu (Help / Citations). If you find the software useful for your research, please cite it. Thank you.

  • M. Klinger, L. Polívka, A. Jager and M. Tyunina. Quantitative analysis of structural inhomogeneity in nanomaterials using transmission electron microscopy. Journal of Applied Crystallography, 49(3), 2016. doi:10.1107/S1600576716003800.
  • M. Klinger and A. Jäger. Crystallographic Tool Box (CrysTBox): automated tools for transmission electron microscopists and crystallographers. Journal of Applied Crystallography, 48(6), 2015. doi:10.1107/S1600576715017252.
  • M. Klinger. CrysTBox - Crystallographic Toolbox. Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2015. URL: http://www.fzu.cz/~klinger/crystbox.pdf. (ISBN 978-80-905962-3-8)
  • M. Klinger, M. Němec, L. Polívka, V. Gärtnerová and A. Jäger. Automated CBED processing: Sample thickness estimation based on analysis of zone-axis CBED pattern. Ultramicroscopy, 150(0):88-95, 2015. doi:10.1016/j.ultramic.2014.12.006.

Acknowledgements

This software would not have been possible without many people providing feedback, funding, support and fruitful discussion. I would like to thank to Aleš Jäger, Bernhard Schaffer, Christian Gspan, Eric Leroy, Hongwei Liu, Jan Duchoň, Jun Wu, Konstantinos Goulas, Lukáš Palatinus, Maciej Zubko, Martin Němec, Robin Schäublin, Viera Gärtnerová, Walter Guy.
The software development is supported by the project of the Czech Science Foundation for promotion of excellence in basic research GBP108/12/G043 and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports large RDI infrastructures project LM2015087.

Author contact

If you have any questions, offers or comments, please feel free to contact me:
Miloslav Klinger
e-mail: klingeratpost [dot] cz

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