Dolphins all look pretty similar. So it can be
problematic when your job requires you to identify individual dolphins in order
to study their behavioral and ecological patterns. Photo-identification
techniques -- recognizing a particular dolphin by the nicks, scars and notches
on its dorsal fin -- are useful, but tedious. Researchers at Eckerd College
in St. Petersburg, Florida, developed DARWIN, or Digital
Analysis and Recognition of Whale Images on a Network, a computer program that
simplifies photo-identification of bottlenose dolphins by applying computer
vision and signal processing techniques to automate much of the tedious manual
photo-id process. DARWIN
is a software system which has been developed to support the creation of
reliable and intuitive image database queries using fin outlines.
It effectively performs registration of image
data to compensate for the fact that the photographs are taken from different
angles and distances and compares digital images of new dorsal fins with a
database of previously identified fins. The software uses an automated process
to create a tracing of the fin outline, which is then used to formulate a
sketch-based query of the database. The system utilizes a variety of image
processing and computer vision algorithms to perform the matching process that
identifies those previously cataloged fins which most closely resemble the
unknown fin. The program ranks catalog fin images from ‘most like’ to ‘least
like’ the new unknown fin image and presents images for side by side
comparison. The DARWIN
software is free and available for download.
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