DigiMorph Delivers CT-Scans to Your Desktop

The University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomographic Facility (UTCT) has created an online biological visualization library called DigiMorph, which contains X-ray computer tomographic (X-ray CT) scans of living and extinct vertebrates and invertebrates contributed by the facility and more than 80 collaborating international researchers. The UTCT facility is used by researchers all over the country to scan the internal structure of rocks, meteorites, fossils, and modern organisms at macro- and microscopic scales. The DigiMorph homepage presents recent additions to the biological collection including, most recently, an X-ray CT-scan of the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct but recently spotted in Arkansas. DigiMorph made the best of an old mounted specimen of an ivory-billed woodpecker by imaging it inside and out to produce the figure at right. The specimen shown here was scanned to create 339 "slices" of the bird, each slice being 0.2 mm thick. The site contains fast links to images of alligators, dinosaurs, and other cool images.