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Hello everyone, I have quite a few projects going on and I'm going to be a bit more active on here to share things. Sorry I've been a bit quiet! I see there are a few threads on here about CT scanning, 3D printing and segmentation, but I thought I would add this one. I've been doing it for a few years, but just bit the bullet and bought a machine custom built to do this. I really think we should create a sub section of fossil preparation for CT scanning and segmentation? Resources are scattered around the internet and it would be great to document them all on here. I have lots to learn and I'd like to "upload" this knowledge here as I aquire it. E.g. Hardware set up, software, things like digitization tips and tricks (stylus pen and tablet vs mouse). The same sort of thing we have for physical prep on here: set-up, tools and techniques. Anyway. I just acquired a very powerful computer and I fired it up last night. I have a CT scan of a Pliocene gannet skull that was found last year that I've been sitting on. At least I think it is gannet. I am using imageJ to do the segmentation. Segmentation is just the process of telling the computer what is bone, what is rock and what is air. I don't have a photo of the concretion, but here is a 3D model above. It is about 10cm long. This is looking from above. Here is one of 760 slices from the CT scan of the skull. A vertical slice with the top of the skull at the top of the image. Pixel size is about 30 microns! Here is the view after ONE round of training the computer. I selected some areas of bone, some of rock and some of air. Then the computer thought about it, using 160 GB of ram (out of my total 192 GB) and the latest Intel chipset in a water-cooled CPU to classify every pixel as bone (red), rock (green) or air (purple). It does this for every of the 760 slices. This is a first pass. You can go back and train the computer further and correct it. It gets better with each round. Here is the first reconstruction of the skull. You can see there is still a bit of noise. I could get rid of that with a few more learning phases. A lot of loose pixels could be removed in rendering software such as Blender too. Hope you enjoyed this. I'll keep you posted as I improve the model. And I'd like to 3D print it at the end!

Hello everyone. Ive thinking of getting a new computer. The one ive been using is at least 10 years old. Getting a new one scares me cause I have no idea how to get all the stuff from this computer onto a new one? Hold it, I do have all my photos on one of those thingamaboppers and can maybe easily put them onto a new one? but what about email? what about this forum? and a bunch of other things like paypal and our favorite auction site? I used to ask my middle son when it came to the computer stuff. it was easy for him. My son died a little while ago and I have to force myself to stay busy even though it doesnt work most of the time. Having to work on a new computer may keep my mind busy. Thank you RB