Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2018 Apr 2;13(4):e0195184. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195184. eCollection 2018.
Despite increasing ability to store and analyze large amounts of data for organismal and ecological studies, the process of collecting distance and count measurements from images has largely remained time consuming and error-prone, particularly for tasks for which automation is difficult or impossible. Improving the efficiency of these tasks, which allows for more high quality data to be collected in a shorter amount of time, is therefore a high priority. The open-source web application, webpic, implements common web languages and widely available libraries and productivity apps to streamline the process of collecting distance and count measurements from images. In this paper, I introduce the framework of webpic and demonstrate one readily available feature of this application, linear measurements, using fossil leaf specimens. This application fills the gap between workflows accomplishable by individuals through existing software and those accomplishable by large, unmoderated crowds. It demonstrates that flexible web languages can be used to streamline time-intensive research tasks without the use of specialized equipment or proprietary software and highlights the potential for web resources to facilitate data collection in research tasks and outreach activities with improved efficiency.
尽管在进行生物和生态学研究时,人们能够存储和分析大量数据,但从图像中收集距离和计数测量值的过程仍然很耗时且容易出错,尤其是对于那些难以实现自动化或无法实现自动化的任务。因此,提高这些任务的效率是当务之急,这可以使更多高质量的数据在更短的时间内被收集到。开源网络应用程序 webpic 实现了常见的网络语言以及广泛可用的库和生产力应用程序,以简化从图像中收集距离和计数测量值的过程。在本文中,我介绍了 webpic 的框架,并展示了该应用程序的一个现成功能,即使用化石叶片标本进行线性测量。该应用程序填补了现有软件可实现的个人工作流程和大型、无人监管的人群可实现的工作流程之间的空白。它表明,灵活的网络语言可用于简化耗时的研究任务,而无需使用专用设备或专有软件,并强调了网络资源在提高效率的研究任务和外展活动中促进数据收集的潜力。