Morphological analysis of Brownian motion for physical measurements

Abstract

Brownian motion is a well-known, apparently chaotic motion affecting microscopic objects in fluid media. The mathematical and physical basis of Brownian motion have been well studied but not often exploited. In this article we propose a particle tracking methodology based on mathematical morphology, suitable for Brownian motion analysis, which can provide difficult physical measurements such as the local temperature and viscosity. We illustrate our methodology on simulation and real data, showing that interesting phenomena and good precision can be achieved.