Standard Method for Detection of Focused Areas in Microscope Images?

Is there a gold standard for finding focused areas in images acquired by optical microscopes? Is there a contrast measure frequently used?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

If the "in focus" regions have higher texture then you can find those regions with a texture filter like stdfilt() or convolve with a Laplacian kernel and then threshold to find the "high texture" regions.

[Image Analyst]

I believe Photoshop uses a similar, though undoubtedly more sophisticated method in its focus selection. Go here for a demo video: Photoshop focus selection video

[ImageProcessingScientist]

Photoshop will not help me much. I want to implement algorithms that detect focused areas on my own or to integrate implementations in the software I am working on.

[Image Analyst]

It was just FYI - that there is some justification for the approach I suggested because other apps are doing similar things. So, try stdfilt() for starters.