Introduction to diffusion modelling

This page links to a series of presentations and exercises forms a core, basic course in diffusion modelling.  It goes through the very basics, what diffusion is, how it is measured, and modelled.  The worksheets use microsoft Excel to step-by-step build a simple, analytical model that can be applied to some types of real diffusion data, providing an initial springboard to understanding, building and applying diffusion models.  More complex types of model that invoke a wider array of dependencies and variables are discussed in subsequent sections of this site.

Note about formats: Presentations are recorded in voice-overed PDF format using Adobe Presenter software.  They need to be opened using the official Adobe Acrobat Reader, which will also need a local copy of Flash Player to incorporate the necessary flash codecs to read the voiceover.  For this reason, please download the files and open them in Reader, and have an up to date version of Flash Player on your computer. (Most browsers have built in PDF readers that will attempt to open the PDF component but will lose the voice over or present only a blank screen).

To keep costs down and the material accessible, we refer to the following software.  Acrobat Reader / Flash (free) for presentations and worksheets; Microsoft Excel (commonly available) for modelling and data processing - though we note that Apache OpenOffice Calc (free) can be functionally equivalent; NIH ImageJ or it's upgraded relative FIJI (free) for image processing.