Fossilized Fish multispectral

[Dr Klaus Schmitt]

A while ago I had the honor to work with Neal Larson (the guy who found SUE the famous T-Rex) on a paper on fossilized cephalopods found in Hajoula, Lebanon. LINK to Paper

Today it is about enhancing the visibility of fossil bone and tissue structures using UV reflected and UV stimulated visible fluorescence photography. I will also use my remapping technology consisting of a visible image, a reflected UV image and an UV stimulated visible fluorescence image for that and combine them into multispectral images.

Lens used was my CERCO quatz fluorite lens, light sources were a modified high power Xenon flash as well as a NICHIA 365nm Power LED. Target was a fossilized fish from Solnhofen, Germany, approx. 100 Mio years old.


Visible light image using UV/IR Cut filter:

Reflected UV image using Baader-U filter (310-390nm):

UV stimulated visible fluorescence (FL) using Nichia 365nm UV LED:

Combined VIS - FL multispectral image:

Combined VIS - UV multispectral image:

Combined FL - UV multispectral image:

It gets nicely visible that using UV light brings out much more details than normal visible light photography and by doing so enhances the visibility of preserved bone and tissue structures quite a bit. Combining those different images even more enhances the structures.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish....

[Asher Kelman]

Wonderful how the UV light picks up so much additional features of the fossil. A tomogram would be helpful too! I wonder whether that is feasible? Perhaps one could image through the rock with an MRI?

How thick is it?

Asher

[Dr Klaus Schmitt]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

Wonderful how the UV light picks up so much additional features of the fossil. A tomogram would be helpful too! I wonder whether that is feasible? Perhaps one could image through the rock with an MRI?

How thick is it?

Asher

About 10mm thickness it has. I know that XRF analysis has successfully been done scanning for various elements and the combining those images into one false color image. I haven't heard that tomography has been used for this tho; for mummies it has been used, I know.

[Asher Kelman]

Originally Posted by Dr Klaus Schmitt

About 10mm thickness it has. I know that XRF analysis has successfully been done scanning for various elements and the combining those images into one false color image. I haven't heard that tomography has been used for this tho; for mummies it has been used, I know.

Well it looks like it's very likely possible by a number of tomographic techniques. Here in this nature article, "Synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy of fossil embryos", they show very fine detail to look at blastomere's and more.

Still your UV method, besides it's inherent beauty, is a very quick way of getting extra information of an embedded fossil on the surface of rocks, just with a camera setup and it's entirely mobile!

When you build your multispectral pictures, will you also do various mathematical manipulations in photoshop beyond just addition?

Asher

[Dr Klaus Schmitt]

Yes indeed, it is very lightweight my setup and can also be brought on site if so needed.

Combining images this certain way may be done using different software (ImageJ, Fiji etc.), I don't use Photoshop for that.