Second order stereology for anisotropic Boolean segment processes with application
Abstract
This paper describes statistical properties of various estimators of intensity of anisotropic boolean segment processes. In order to quantify the estimation variances, the pair correlation function of appropriate random measures has to be evaluated. The projections of the process on R1 and intersections with a system of (d−1)-dimensional parallel hyperplanes were studied. Some results of Beneš et al 1993 are used, where the second order stereological formula for the pair correlation function of the projection measure of anisotropic fibre processes was derived and estimation variances compared.
These results were applied to a study of soil porosity, where the earthworm burrow system were modelled by a segment process.
The variances of these estimators were compared and the convergence of the serial section estimator to the projection estimator illustrated. The variance of the serial section estimator decreases rapidly when the number of sections increases and flattens out to the variance of the projection estimator. This approximation was used to discuss the effect of the sample shape onto the variance of length intensity estimation by using serial sections.