# Identifying Features

When using the Blue Locate tool to identify features, follow these steps:

1. If necessary, adjust the Region of Interest (ROI) of the tool.

2. In the bottom-left corner of the display, there is a circle graphic that graphically illustrates the size of the Feature Size parameter setting.

   This circle graphic can be moved into the ROI and placed over the largest feature. Then, using the drag handle, you can adjust the Feature Size so that it approximately covers the feature.

   Note: For more information, refer to the Blue Locate Tool – Feature Size topic.

3. Within the ROI, while hovering over the image, the mouse-cursor will have a cross-hairs icon which is used to place the feature label of the Blue tool. Click on a feature to label it.

   Note: For more information, refer to the Blue Locate Tool – Labels and Markings and Blue Locate Tool – Apply Feature Label Graphics – Tips and Shortcuts topics.

4. The feature label will have a default character of 0. Enter in a meaningful character (A-Z, 0-9, up to 140 characters) to identify the feature. For identical features, you can use the same identifier.

   If there is more than one feature that you want to find in the image, identify and label each feature.

5. Go through each image in your image database and identify and label each instance of the feature(s).

   Tip: To ensure the best results, be careful and thorough in this process, ensuring that you identify and label every instance of the feature. When labeling your features, ensure that you are very accurate and precise with each feature that you label. You are establishing the ground truth for the tool, and the tool's accuracy is a direct reflection of how accurately you label the features.

6. Once you have labeled several features in your images, press the Brain icon to train the tool.

   Tip: In addition to the following tips, consider using the bootstrap method of labeling your images. "Bootstrap" labeling refers to the process of beginning your labeling process by just labeling a small sample size of your images, then training the tool, and reviewing the results by accepting views with correct markings to convert them into labels, and removing incorrect markings and replacing them with correct labels. You can speed up this process further by dividing images into multiple views and only labeling a single view. In addition, you can also temporarily reduce the Epoch Count parameter (one of the Training Tool Parameters), which will make the training time shorter.

7. After training, review the results by going through all of the images and determining whether or not the tool correctly marked the features in the image.

   1. If the tool has correctly marked the features, right-click the image and select Accept View.

   2. If the tool has incorrectly marked the features, failed to identify a present feature, or placed a mismatch label to a feature, do the following:

      Note: If the tool has placed one or more mismatched features (indicated by an orange outline), refer to the Mismatches topic.
      1. Right-click the image and select Accept View.
      2. Right-click the image again and select Clear Markings and Labels.
      3. Manually re-label the features in the image.
8. If you encountered the scenario in (A.), you are ready to use the tool. If you encountered the scenario in (B.), you will need to retrain the tool and repeat the previous two steps.