Pre-reconstruction crop tool

[ercius]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. The full field of view does not always need to be reconstructed. It is possible to crop along the tilt-axis (x-axis) without any impact on the reconstruction quality. It is also possible to crop along the axis perpendicular to the tilt-axis (y-axis) as long as you symmetrically crop the top and bottom equally. It must be symmetrical to avoid moving the tilt-axis. This can then be used to significantly reduce the reconstruction time and the final tomography output data size.

In the screenshot I show how you can crop left-right (x-axis) freely to select only the region of interest. The y-axis can be cropped also, but must be done equally (-10 pixels on both sides). The z-axis (tilt number) can not be cropped at all. This data can be reconstructed faster without any issues and the final recon size is smaller. This is a bad example since Im cutting off useful areas, but many other samples might only have a small region of interest which could be reconstructed without the surrounding background.

Describe the solution you would like A modified version of the crop tool which allows arbitrary x-axis cropping, symmetrical y-axis cropping and no z-axis cropping. Shifting of the entire box should also be disabled.

This can either be done in the 3D window or in a new pop-up box GUI. A new GUI might be used so that either the any tilt image is shown, or maybe instead the sum of all images. This could avoid the user cropping information which is not seen at 0 degrees, but enters the field of view later in the series which needs to be included.

It might also be necessary to make the cropped shape even valued. (i.e. 50x100x72 and not 49x100x72)

Describe alternatives you have considered The crop tool works for this as long as the user is aware of the y-axis and z-axis limitations.