ImageJ batch processing - opening a series of images containing a specific name and doing stuff on them - batch-processing

Question

I have 25K tif files (please don't ask why) that I want to organize into stacks on image J. Basically for each region of interest (ROI), there are 50 images which breaks down into 25 z-planes for two channels. I want everything in a single stack. And I'd like to batch process the whole folder without opening 50 images 500 times at a time. I've attached a picture of what the file names look like:
Folder organization
r01c01f01p01-ch1.tif - the first 10 characters are unique ID to each ROI, then plane number (p01) then channel - ch1 or ch2, then file extension
Here's what I have so far (which I cobbled together based on other macros so this may not make sense...).This is using the ImageJ macros language.
//Processing loop to process each file in the folder.
for (i=0; i<list.length; i++) {
showProgress(i+1, list.length);
if (endsWith(list[i], ".tif")) { // skip the subfolder (I create a subfolder earlier in the macros)
print("-- Processing file: " + list[i] + " --");
open(dir+list[i]);
imageTitle= getTitle();
newTitle = substring(imageTitle, 0, lengthOf(imageTitle)-10); // r01c01f01p, cutting off plane number and then the rest to just get the ROI ID
//This is where I'm stuck:
// find all files containing newTitle and open them (which would be 50 at a time), then run the following macros on them
run("Images to Stack", "name=Ch1 title=[] use");
run("Duplicate...", "title=Ch2 duplicate");
selectWindow("Ch1");
run("Slice Remover", "first=1 last=50 increment=2");
selectWindow("Ch2");
run("Slice Remover", "first=2 last=50 increment=2");
run("Merge Channels...", "c1=Ch1 c2=Ch2 create");
saveAs("tiff", dirNew + newTitle + "_Stack.tif");
//Close(All)?
}
}
print("-- Done --");
showStatus("Finished.");
setBatchMode(false); // Exit batch mode
run("Collect Garbage");
Thank you!

Answer 1

You could do something like:
for (plane=1; plane<51; plane++) {
open(newTitle+plane+"-ch1.tif");
open(newTitle+place+"-ch2.tif");
}
Which would take care of the opening. I would be inclined to have a loop prior to this which would collate the number of unique "newTitle"'s, as your current setup would end up doing something like opening the first item, assembling the combined TIF, and then repeat the process 25K times if I understand it correctly.
Given that you know the number of unique "r01c01f01p" values, in principle you could do a set of stacked loops akin to:
newTitleArray = newArray();
for (r=1; r<50; r++) {
titleBit = "r0" + toString(r);
for (c=1; c<501; c++) {
titleBit = titleBit + "f0"...
Alternatively, you could set up a loop where you check for unique "r01c01f01p" values and add them to an array. In any case, you'd replace the for "list" loop with the for "newTitleArray" loop, and then continue onto the opener I listed above, instead of your existing one.

Answer 2

If I am understanding correctly, it seems like you might do well to stack by channel first, then merge the two. I am not 100% sure, but I think you could potentially use a macro I have already created to do that. It was originally meant to batch process terabytes of 5D data, so it should be very comfortable handling your volume of images. It is not exactly what you are looking for, but should be super easy to modify (I went a little overboard with the commenting in the code), and I think the only thing it does that you might rather it not is produce max projects from the inputs. I'll throw a link here and look for your reply. If it's of interest, let me know and we can work to make it suit your needs together :-) Otherwise, if you could provide a little more detail about where you're getting stuck and/or where I may have misunderstood, I will do my very best to help!
https://github.com/evanjkiely/FIJIMacros