Edmonton—Studying fossils might not be on any ECE course syllabus, but that isn’t stopping a team of researchers from applying some computer engineering ingenuity to find a new method for digitizing, studying, and sharing microfossil samples.Dr. Dileepan Joseph, PhD candidate Adam Harrison, and MSc student Cindy Wong have developed a new way to digitally capture and display microfossils and other specimens, called Virtual Reflected-Light Microscopy (VRLM). Viewing their shared images is similar to examining a real sample. The team is achieving this by capturing a series of digital images of a microfossil through a microscope. Each image is taken with a light source shifted automatically around the sample, creating different shading and shadows on its surface. This allows the team to extract a three-dimensional map of the sample, which computer software can further
interpret. The result is imagery that is on par with viewing a real microfossil sample. Users can control the angle, intensity, and type of light hitting the sample, and can even view it in 3-D using 3-D glasses. The method could change the way geoscientists examine microscopic samples that are collected through projects like the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). These microfossils provide researchers with information that is crucial for climate study, and oil and gas exploration. Generally the samples are collected in large repositories all over the world. Researchers often need to travel far distances to study the vast collections of samples.
VRLM could facilitate a massive digital library of samples that can be interacted with through a web browser.
“You can have the best digital representation in the world, but if you can’t share it, it doesn’t matter,” Harrison said. For her part in the project, Wong developed a Java applet that allows end users to interact with the VRLM representations in a simple, intuitive way. “This is a much closer representation of using an actual microscope,” she said. “But it is also a way to get things out to a larger audience easily and more cost effectively.” Another benefit of VRLM concerns the automation of the identification process for the vast quantity of samples collected through the IODP. “We’re interested in ways of accelerating the identification process,” Joseph said. “This definitely gets us closer to that goal.” While the team continues to refine their system, they’re also looking
at other uses for VRLM. Because it can record data from any opaque material, there are definite applications in metallurgic study. They’ve also been in contact with the Natural History Museum in London, UK, which is providing them samples from its large collection of microfossils.
“There’s huge potential for educating the public with VRLM,” Joseph said. “People respond to its interactive nature.” “In the past, researchers might get a few images of a specimen under a
few lighting conditions. It would give them the general outline and some other properties, but it was not comparable to actually looking at a specimen,” Harrison said. “What we’re doing is like reverse
engineering: using multiple images together to extract the shape of samples. And with that we get important properties such as surface reflectance.
ECE researchers tackle geoscience problem in the third dimension - Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering - University of Alberta
