About the Digital Fish Library

About the Digital Fish Library (DFL) project explores the morphological diversity of fishes using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The mission of this project is to make an online archive of 3D MRI images of fish that is accessible to scientists, educators and the general public on the web. The anatomy of fish is typically studied by physical dissection with measurements and observations of tissues and organ structures such as bones, muscles, gas bladders, made directly from the specimen. This approach most often destroys the integrity of the specimen and limits direct observations to a single research worker. MRI offers an alternative method for collecting detailed 3D anatomical information by using high resolution image data from scanned fishes that can be digitally dissected at any time by many research workers. It allows for detailed measurements and observations of almost any fish species, and is non-invasive, reducing the need to dissect rare specimens and holotypes. The majority of the DFL specimens are provided by The Marine Vertebrates Collection at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The DFL is a collaborative project at the University of California, San Diego, involving the following research centres: Center for Scientific Computation in Imaging (CSCI); Center for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (CFMRI); Marine Vertebrates Collection at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO); and Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Comments & References: Funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Biological Infrastructure program (Grant DBI-0446389). For more information, please see http://www.digitalfishlibrary.org/about.

Price: Online: Free of charge