Martin Jones talks citizen science ahead of SpotOn 18

One of Robert Hooke’s meticulous sketches of fleasWikimedia Commons Observation is a key part of the scientific process. For many years significant effort was required to capture single scientific images, from meticulously hand-drawn views through a microscope (e.g. Robert Hooke’s sketches of fleas), through to photographic plates used in astronomy. These methods were all rather slow, allowing the scientists ample time to analyze and interpret each individual image. However, with the advent of modern imaging systems that incorporate fast digital cameras and detectors, precision motion control and access to vast storage banks, the speed at which image data is captured has grown astronomically. This means that the scientists are no longer able to dedicate large amounts of time to each image – in fact, images can be generated so quickly in some systems that no single person could even hope to look at each image, let alone perform any significant analysis. Many tasks are still beyond the capabilities of even the biggest supercomputers. In the age of computers, it seems obvious that we should simply write some software that analyzes the images for us. However, due to the ease with which humans can understand and interpret meaning in images, we have historically chronically underestimated just how hard a task this actually is. In the early days of AI, a project to construct ‘a significant part of a visual system’ in software was expected to be sufficient to keep some stud...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Technology citizen science SpotOn SpotOn18 Source Type: blogs