fiducial

• In law the term "fiducial" means "of or pertaining to a fiduciary".

• In imaging technology, a fiduciary marker or fiducial is an object used in the field of view of an imaging system which appears in the image produced, for use as a point of reference or a measure.

• "Fiducial" is also used for something taken as an origin or zero of reference. For example, the occurrence of a specified event in time may be established by a number—representing, say, hour or date—obtained by counting from a fiducial epoch, such as a meridian passage of the sun or the birth of Christ. A fiducial point also figures in the calculation of astrological ages.

• The "fiducial edge" of an alidade is the place on the instrument at which one reads a scale or draws a line.

• In statistics, fiducial inference is a form of interval estimation developed by R.A. Fisher in connection with the Behrens–Fisher problem.

• In airborne geophysical surveys, a "fiducial" is a shared sequential timing reference for geophysical measurements collected during a survey flight.

• In low-background physics experiments where a detecting medium exhibits self shielding properties a fiducial volume is defined as an interior volume of the detecting medium that excludes the most external portion of the detection medium where most background events will occur.

See also

Fiduciary marker

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