ABSTRACT
Optical data analysis is essentially spectral analysis by diffraction. A coherent monochromatic light source is used to produce a Fourier analysis of the raw data. In Fourier analysis the pictorial data is transformed from the spatial domain to the frequency domain. Walsh/Hadamard functions, a related family of transforms, produce analyses into the sequency domain. This technique is useful for analyzing sound spectrographs and has been used in morphology to examine the shapes of leaves. A preliminary study has been made of photographs of a number of sections of the bodies of human lumbar vertebrae. Patterns are clearly different from the geometric examples which are periodic, and different also from the rock patterns which are primarily random. Trabecular patterns are far from random and possess their own regularity, although they are not regular in a periodic sense as are the geometric figures.
