See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7068160.stm
Interesting news item: spider in amber
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gpmatthews
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Interesting news item: spider in amber
Graham
Though we lean upon the same balustrade, the colours of the mountain are different.
Though we lean upon the same balustrade, the colours of the mountain are different.
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Mike B in OKlahoma
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1 mm across, and full sharp DOF from top to bottom? Must be one of Rik's shots!!! 
Mike Broderick
Oklahoma City, OK, USA
Constructive critiques of my pictures, and reposts in this forum for purposes of critique are welcome
"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul....My mandate includes weird bugs."
--Calvin
Oklahoma City, OK, USA
Constructive critiques of my pictures, and reposts in this forum for purposes of critique are welcome
"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul....My mandate includes weird bugs."
--Calvin
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rjlittlefield
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Even better! This image of the spider can be rolled around in real time and stay sharp, without even any stacking artifacts!Mike B in OKlahoma wrote:1 mm across, and full sharp DOF from top to bottom? Must be one of Rik's shots!!!
The imaging technique described by the article is called Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography. What that means is, they shined X-rays through it at a huge number of different angles, then computed what the absorbance was for each tiny volume ("voxel") of the subject and its surrounding matrix, the amber. A thresholding algorithm then decided what was amber, what was spider, on a voxel-by-voxel basis. That 3D cloud of points then probably got run through a surface-fitting algorithm to make a nice model of the spider's skin, and finally a 3D graphics rendering algorithm (think video games!) produced a picture with realistic lighting.
This is very cool technology. A larger-scale version of it has been developed for use in "virtual colonoscopy" and a wide variety of other medical procedures.
--Rik