Table 1.

A comparison of the features of current SFM image analysis software

	Image SXM	ImageJ	WSxM	Gwyddion	Nano-Scope	JPK-SPM	SFMetrics
Image format compatibility:
Bruker-Multimode	Yes	(Yes)*	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
JPK-NanoWizard	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Asylum-MFP 3D	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
ASCII	Yes	(Yes)*	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
TJP(tiff/jpeg/png)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Operating system:
OS X	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	(Yes) &
Windows	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Linux	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	(Yes) &
Irregular objects analysis:
Edge thresholding#	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Skeleton-length	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Freehand-length	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
High-throughput analysis	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes

*ImageJ can make use of specific plugins to deal with these features.

^&SFMetrics can be run from the scripts in any operating system with MATLAB installed.

^#Although ‘edge detection’ is a common feature in many software packages it is usually not adjustable or cannot be used as a binary mask to extract features from the original image.