Today is the big day – our press release is now out, and even featured on the SIO (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) website. In just under an hour we’ll begin scanning a juvenile great white shark as part of the press “event.”
If you haven’t read my other posts on the DFL, here’s a brief recap: We’ve been given an NSF grant to digitize most genera of marine fish (some freshwater) in the world using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The end goal of this has several application points: 1) Fish anatomy is digitized, so researchers can perform virtual dissections and explore the fish’s organs without physically destroying the real specimens; 2) These data, along with software tools we’re creating, will be used as teaching tools in high school education programs, provided by the Birch Aquarium as Scripps, 3) the availability of data will encourage conservation practices, as destroying real tissues will become less and less a necessity to perform common anatomical research – something especially important when dealing with rare specimens.
The press release is at http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=718
More importantly, the DFL website is located at http://www.digitalfishlibrary.org/
Enjoy…