COLLABORATIVE PROPOSAL:ABI DEVELOPMENT: AN INTEGRATED PLATFORM FOR RETRIEVAL, VISUALIZATION AND ANALYSIS OF 3D MORPHOLOGY FROM DIGITAL BIOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS

一个有机体的解剖结构可以为它对环境的适应、它的进化史和它的系统关系提供重要线索。有机体的形态（定量）研究？S形和功能通常在自然历史博物馆进行，通过直接测量标本。高分辨率3D成像技术（例如，微型计算机断层扫描）使我们能够以前所未有的细节捕捉生物标本的内部和外部解剖结构。同样，在线虚拟“收藏”（例如，MorphoSource）提供了访问这些数据集的便利，而不需要科学家前往不同的博物馆收集数据。然而，对于大多数研究人员来说，这些3D数据集的复杂性使其难以分析。在这个项目中，我们建议开发一个开源软件来检索和可视化在线博物馆的三维生物标本。我们还将为科学家开发工具，以便更容易地测量和分析解剖结构。几何形态计量学方法（GMM）是一套定量分析技术，依靠地标来捕捉生物体的形状和形式。该项目提出为开源3D切片器（Slicer）可视化软件开发一个GMM模块，作为一个集成工具包，以解决研究人员在处理3D解剖数据时面临的挑战。除了手动标注地标外，该工具包还将提供两种不同类型的半地标方法（用户引导和自动），以便为不同的研究设计提供通用的密集空间采样。标注的地标数据可以在GMM模块中使用广义Procrustes分析（GPA）进行分析。与GPA相关的形状变化可以分解为主翘曲，并可以在全3D中可视化。Toolkit还将提供一个数据聚合器（SpecMart），它将通过分类（和其他令牌）查询在线3D标本库MorphoSource，检索和可视化切片器中的数据。我们将训练学生在理论和应用三维图像分割，分析和可视化，因为它适用于非医疗体积成像数据集，以促进这些数据集的再现和高通量分析。该工具包将使用开源工具链和软件开发平台（如git）作为Slicer的附加包进行开发。该模块的稳定版本将通过Slicer的扩展管理器（及其在线门户）分发，文档将托管在他们的网站上。这种开发和使用Slicer社区现有基础设施的开源性质已经存在了超过15年，用于分发和支持工具包，这意味着该软件将在未来的许多年里广泛可用，并且可以得到用户社区的支持（并可能扩展）。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The anatomical structure of an organism can provide important clues about its adaptation to its environment, its evolutionary history and its systematic relationships. The morphometric (quantitative) study of the organism?s shape and function is typically conducted at natural history museums, by measuring the specimen directly. High-resolution 3D imaging techniques (e.g., micro computed tomography) provide us to capture the internal and external anatomy of biological specimens in unprecedented detail. Likewise, online virtual "collections" (e.g., MorphoSource) provide a convenient access to these datasets, without requiring scientists to travel to different museums to collect their data. However, the complex nature of these 3D datasets makes them challenging to analyze for most researchers. In this project, we propose to develop an open-source software to retrieve and visualize 3D biological specimens from online museums. We will also develop tools for the scientists to measure and analyze the anatomy more easily. Geometric Morphometrics Methods (GMM) are a set of quantitative analytical techniques that rely on landmarks to capture organismal shape and form. This project proposes to develop a GMM module for open-source 3D-Slicer (Slicer) visualization software as an integrated toolkit to address challenges researchers face working with 3D anatomical data. In addition to manual annotation of landmarks, the toolkit will provide two distinct (user-guided and automated) types of semi-landmarking methods to enable general purpose dense spatial sampling for different study designs. Annotated landmark data can be analyzed in the GMM module using the Generalized Procrustes Analysis (GPA). Shape variation associated with GPA can be decomposed as principal warps and can be visualized in full 3D. Toolkit will also provide a data aggregator (SpecMart) that will query online 3D specimen repository MorphoSource by taxonomy (and other tokens), retrieve and visualize data within Slicer. We will train students in theory and application of 3D image segmentation, analysis and visualization as it applies to nonmedical volumetric imaging datasets to facilitate reproducible and high-throughput analysis of such datasets. The toolkit will be developed as an add-on package to Slicer using open-source toolchains and software development platforms (such as git). The stable versions of the module will be distributed through Extension Manager of Slicer (and its online portal) and documentation will be hosted on their site. The open-source nature of this development and use of the Slicer community's existing infrastructure that has been in existence more than 15 years to distribute and support the toolkit will mean that the software will be widely available for many years to come and can be supported (and potentially expanded) by the user community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.