Interpolating slices in a stack

A colleague asked for a macro that for an entire stack would average two adjacent slices in a stack and insert the result between the originals.

In this collection of macros the macro "interleave stacks" creates a running average of 2 stack and interleaves back into the original and sets the Z scale metadata to the original divided by 2.

After writing it, I realized that the Z rescaling command in ImageJ might do the same thing much faster. I was surprised, however, that the interpolation stretched throughout the stack. For the application requested, the macro solution is required.

Top group: Original data.
Middle group: result of macro.
  Each original slice is preserved and the inserted slice is a function of only the two surrounding slices.
Bottom group: Image > Scale > with X scale 1, Y scale 1, Z scale 2, interpolation bilinear.
  Slices are averaged with weights based on distance over a range of the stack. Only the first and last slice are preserved unchanged.

About the macro:

It uses average intensity to combine the two images, but there are other methods that could be in the function  projectStackVariableWidth("Average Intensity", 2);

The macro “Projections of variable width” allows you to test the different methods.
"Max Intensity", "Average Intensity", "Standard Deviation", "Min Intensity", "Median"

Also, a custom function could be added, such as a difference followed by other math.

Also, reslicing, then rescaling in Y, then reslicing again might be faster.

Of course there is morphing software...

last updated 20190605