MorphoHaptics: An Open-Source Tool for Visuohaptic Exploration of Morphological Image Datasets

TL;DR

MorphoHaptics is an open-source visuohaptic tool that improves understanding and processing of tomographic fossil data by mimicking traditional physical workflows, enhancing morphology exploration and material property perception.

Contribution

The paper introduces MorphoHaptics, a novel open-source visuohaptic system that facilitates virtual fossil preparation and morphological exploration, bridging the gap between physical and digital workflows.

Findings

Haptics enhances morphological understanding

Visuohaptic sculpting is user-friendly

Improves over existing tomographic methods

Abstract

Although digital methods have significantly advanced morphology, practitioners are still challenged to understand and process tomographic specimen data. As automated processing of fossil data remains insufficient, morphologists still engage in intensive manual work to prepare digital fossils for research objectives. We present an open-source tool that enables morphologists to explore tomographic data similarly to the physical workflows that traditional fossil preparators experience in the field. We assessed the usability of our prototype for virtual fossil preparation and its accompanying tasks in the digital preparation workflow. Our findings indicate that integrating haptics into the virtual preparation workflow enhances the understanding of the morphology and material properties of working specimens. Our design's visuohaptic sculpting of fossil volumes was deemed straightforward and an improvement over current tomographic data processing methods.