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iMorph

iMorph (Detection of geometric morphometric landmarks in 2D insect wing images): The field of morphometrics, or morphometry, is concerned with the analysis of form, which is defined by shape and size, of an object. Shape is defined as the set of geometric properties of an object that are invariant to position, orientation, and scale. In a population of specimens of interest, shape variability with size, i.e. allometry, is also considered. The main goal of morphometrics is to elucidate how shapes vary and their covariance with other variables such as diseases, environmental stresses, or development etc. Morphometrics is very important in biology because it allows quantitative descriptions of organisms, hence facilitating comparative studies by statistical analysis methods. Landmark-based geometric morphometrics uses a set of landmarks to describe shape. Landmark, a two- or three-dimensional point represented by locus coordinates, is described by a tightly defined set of rules that indicates the evolutionary significance for the organism in question. Given these defined rules, it is next necessary to identify the landmarks on each specimen. This task is normally done by an expert, however, it is time-consuming and error-prone. Therefore, in this project, we aim to automate this by processing object images and employing an image recognition & machine learning model to propose landmark candidates.