24 August 2009

Darwin, dolphin photo-identification software


Darwin is a software system which allows marine scientists to maintain information for the study of various behavioral and ecological patterns of common bottlenose dolphins. It might alo prove useful for other species having similarly shaped distinctive dorsal fins.

http://darwin.eckerd.edu/

The software provides a graphical user interface to access a collection of digital dorsal fin images along with textual information which describes individual animals as well as relevant sighting data. Users may query the system with the name of a specific individual or the entire collection may be sorted and viewed based upon sighting location, sighting date, or damage category. Alternatively, the researcher may query a database of previously identified dolphin dorsal fin images with an image of an unidentified dolphin's fin. Darwin responds with a rank ordered list of database fin images that most closely resemble the query image.

Darwin is also available on GoogleCode.

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