Annotation Tips

Tips from the Most Experienced Annotators

Naomi suggests:

Aya suggests:

Riley suggests:

A Good Segmentation

A good segmentation holds the following features:

A Good Spine

A good segmentation holds the following features:

Unqualified Images

When an image (or part of it) is blurry and unclear, annotators should use GONG H-Alpha Viewer, (see tutorial). When an image is corrupted (such as those shown on the right), it should be labeled as "Not Qualified" without any annotation made.

This shows an example of an image being marked (incorrectly) as "Not Qualified" because it was blurry.

Please recall that a blurry image is not unqualified. Here are some examples of unqualified images.

Not Enough Information?

A good example (Left: annotated by an annotator, Right: Actual Image):

This might be a reoccurring mistake:


Using "auto-annotate" and "brush" Tool

The example shows a segmentation which does not capture the barbs of the filament.

Annotators can get a very good segmentation by only using the auto-annotate tool. This can be done by only a few clicks.

That said, they must use the brush tool to capture the barbs they already identified. 

What a Rejected Annotation Looks Like

The reviewers try to leave comments when they reject an image. Annotators should make sure they read them, and provide corrections accordingly.

An image may be rejected for one or more reasons. When you receive an image back, you only need to fix the issues. The rest of your work will remain there.



Read the comment in this example! These mistakes are frequent ones.

Segmentation Should Capture the Chirality

When a filament is identified as "Left" or "Right", the annotator's segmentation should capture the reasons that made them assign that label. Those reasons are the tiny threads and their orientation.


The example on the right shows a filament (left figure), a good segmentation (middle), and a very good segmentation (right) which captures the orientation of the threads.

Here is another filament (left image). While the annotator has done a good job in capturing the big barbs (middle image), the orientation of threads (smaller barbs) is not captured. In the modified version (right image), those threads are captured as well.  (Full size image)

A Few Examples of Good Annotation

Note how the orientation of threads are captured in the segmentation.

How to Speed Up Annotation

A few tips for speeding up without sacrificing the quality: