The Digital Fish Library (DFL) is a

University of California San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

project funded by the Biological Infrastructure Initiative (DBI) of the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

(NSF). The DFL creates 2D and 3D visualizations of the internal and external anatomy of fish obtained with

magnetic resonance imaging Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio wave ...

(MRI) methods and makes these publicly available on the web. The information core for the Digital Fish Library is generated using high-resolution MRI scanners housed at the Center for

functional magnetic resonance imaging Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...

(CfMRI) multi-user facility at UC San Diego. These instruments use magnetic fields to take 3D images of animal tissues, allowing researchers to non-invasively see inside them and quantitatively describe their 3D anatomy. Fish specimens are obtained from the Marine Vertebrate Collection at

Scripps Institute of Oceanography The Scripps Institution of Oceanography (sometimes referred to as SIO, Scripps Oceanography, or Scripps) in San Diego, California, US founded in 1903, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ocean and Earth science research, public serv ...

(SIO) and imaged by staff from UC San Diego's Center for Scientific Computation in Imaging (CSCI). As of February 2010, the Digital Fish Library contains almost 300 species covering all five classes of fish, 56 of 60 orders, and close to 200 of the 521 fish families as described by Nelson, 2006. DFL imaging has also contributed to a number of published peer-reviewed scientific studies. Digital Fish Library work has been featured in the media, including two National Geographic documentaries: ''Magnetic Navigator'' and ''Ultimate Shark''.

References

External links

Digital Fish Library

National Science Foundation (NSF) Press Release 06-046

Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO) Press Release: March 16, 2006

{{diversity of fish American science websites Zoology Marine biology Magnetic resonance imaging Fish anatomy University of California, San Diego