A University of Washington professor intends to scan and digitize the nearly 25,000 species of fish living on our planet, which will soon have a high-resolution, 3-D visual replica online, available to all and downloadable for free.
To carry out this project, UW professor of biology and aquatic and fishery sciences Adam Summers uses a small computerized tomography (CT) scanner in the back room of a lab to churn out dozens of fish scans from specimens gathered around the world.
The machine works like a standard CT scanner used in hospitals: A series of X-ray images is taken from different angles, then combined using computer processing to create three-dimensional images of the skeleton.
Summers explained that the goal is to make it possible for scientists to examine the morphology of a particular species, or try to understand why a group of fish all have similar physical characteristics such as bony head “armor” or the ability to burrow into the sand.
Summers saw the need for an in-house scanner and raised USD 340,000 to purchase the machine last November that now lives at Friday Harbor Laboratories. His policy is that it’s free and open to anyone who wants to use it, and the fish must come from museum-accessioned collections.
Students, postdoctoral researchers and professors from around the world have taken Summers up on the offer and come to the labs on San Juan Island to scan their favorite specimens.
They also send boxes of fish specimens in the mail for Summers’ lab to scan and post online. Fish from museum collections are trackable with numbers, and the online database now houses scans of fish from the UW’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, the National Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia, Ohio State University, Western Australian Museum and many others.
The professor has fine-tuned and expedited the process by scanning multiple fish at once. He first packs and rolls the specimens together like a burrito in a cylinder that is then placed directly in the scanner. After the machine makes one scan, Summers then digitally separates each 3-D fish into its own file.
Additionally, he doesn’t scan at the highest-possible resolution, because few scientists actually need that much detailed data. This saves more time and digital space — and makes it possible for people to access the files more easily online.
So far about 515 species have been scanned and many are posted online to Open Science Framework, an open-source, sharing website for scholarly projects. Summers expects to finish scanning all of the fish species in the world in two-and-a-half to three years.
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