The overall aim of NA3 is to ensure that SYNTHESYS3 has a clear pathway to impact by making certain that
outputs are well publicised to, and utilised by, the broader research and development community – and that the
work undertaken and benefits created continue beyond the life of the project. Moreover, the outputs assist in the
delivery of other key European initiatives including, but not limited to, LifeWatch
Moving from physical to digital collections
Type of Activity: RTD
Development of website to allow crowdsourcing data capture
Research into crowdsourcing methodologies for NH collections
Identify which digital image data are most appropriate for use with crowdsourcing. This work will draw on
experience with other citizen science crowdsourcing efforts, such as the Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org)
project.
Crowdsourcing metadata enrichment of digital images
High Resolution 3D colour image acquisition
Complementary approaches (colour surface scanning, photogrammetry) will be developed in order to provide
complete information (3D and colour data) of the specimen. Collaborate with existing European projects such
as 3DCOFORM whose focus is on Cultural Heritage digitisation. This task will develop 3DCOFORM outputs to
enable their use with NH specimens.
Automatic processing (segmentation) of digital images
Research and develop edge detection technology to locate and classify multiple regions of interest within images
of NH specimens. Using the principle that pixels in a segment are similar with respect to some characteristic or
computed property (e.g. colour, intensity, or texture), develop a method to semi-automatically detect, crop and
classify these regions of interest such that they can be subject to appropriate additional processing.
Automatic metadata capture
Develop software that will automatically identify properties of an image. These data “facets” will be automatically
captured without human intervention and provide categories of information that allow Users to easily search and
browse virtual collections more effectively.
Automated data collection from digital images
