Thousands of CT-Scans from UT Austin Now Part of Online Archive
March 6, 2024
The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences is among the 18 institutions that took part in the six-year collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation. The school’s High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility – known as UTCT – is contributing around 3,000 CT scans of vertebrate specimens to the project. The specimens were scanned over 26 years and make up around 9 terabytes of data. Nearly 100 UTCT clients from more than 60 universities and museums have agreed to have their data uploaded as part of this effort.
The lab internally archives its scans. But by participating in the oVert project, the lab is helping amplify its reach and scientific impact, said lab manager and research scientist associate Dr. Jessica Maisano.
“The great thing about CT is that the more it’s reused in research, the more bang for their buck granting agencies like NSF get,” said Maisano. “Some datasets from this lab have been used in dozens of publications by dozens of different researchers.”
UTCT is the only institution in the oVert project to contribute fossil scans. UTCT researchers also helped teach CT research skills as part of the project, with Maisano training six UT undergraduates and organizing three-day short courses that cover best practices for CT data acquisition, visualization and analysis.
Learn more about the oVert project in an article on the website of the Florida Museum of Natural History. The researchers also provide a summary of the project in the journal Bioscience.
For more information, contact: Anton Caputo, Jackson School of Geosciences, 210-602-2085; Monica Kortsha, Jackson School of Geosciences, 512-471-2241.