Despite the name, and the leading sentence ("I am on a mission to scan all the ray-finned fishes in the world.") they do not actually intend to scan all the fishes. They settle for merely scanning a single individual from every known ray-finned species. I guess we can leave the real project to Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged after he has finished insulting everyone in alphabetical order.<p>Joking aside it sounds like the way they go about the project is that they load multiple specimens in the CT scanner at a time by forming a "burrito" using the fishes and cheese cloth. Quite smart. Their procedure description is full of practical advice such as "sometimes eels fit best wrapped around the whole burrito." and "You must ensure absolutely no liquids will leak out of your canister", and "Do not force fish into the cylinder, you will break fins and/or deform the animal."<p>Sadly they don't have a Mola tecta scan yet. :)
Ha! I had a side project during my PhD to build a segmenting and straightening program for this project!<p>Source code is here: <a href="https://github.com/fwilliams/unwind">https://github.com/fwilliams/unwind</a><p>Paper is here: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04890" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04890</a><p>It got accepted to Chi 2020 which was cancelled so the paper never got presented, sadly!
Send fish pics<p>In case anyone else was wondering:
"They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of skin supported by radially extended thin bony spines called lepidotrichia, as opposed to the bulkier, fleshy lobed fins of the sister class Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish)."
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actinopterygii" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actinopterygii</a>
MicroCT scanners are really amazing pieces of technology. There's a professor from the University of Granada that posts absolutely incredible 3d MicroCT scans of insects. It really shows that even the lowliest, most inconspicuous beetle is actually an unfathomably complex and intricately detailed thing.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@albatercedor" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@albatercedor</a>
Yes please! Where do I sign up?<p>I tried to find anatomical drawings of my kind (multiple names, most of them coined by the same man, but typically known now as <i>Dicentrarchus labrax</i>, the European seabass). I didn't really succeed: it is exceptionally difficult to find high-quality drawings in any consistent format on the Web, and once you add 'open data' as a requirement, the number drops to almost nil. Good natural history drawings are frequently still easier to find in books from the 19th century than they are the Web!<p>This project will hopefully change that, because from the CT scans, it should be possible to generate consistent images quickly.