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From: David_Bat_Masterson@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: misc.wanted,comp.databases,sci.research,comp.ai,comp.misc
Subject: Re: pattern recognition software (recognizing humpback fins!) w
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Date: Wed, 25-Nov-87 18:21:55 EST
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Posted: Wed Nov 25 18:21:55 1987
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This request sounds vaguely familiar.  I thought I had seen a show about
a few students for a college doing a study of humpback whales.  They
also were having trouble keeping track of which whales were which (maybe
it was killer whales).  The way they went about handling it was to
classify the dorsal fin shape by things like size, shape, bites, extra
spots, barnacles, etc. (their fingerprint).  I forget if they used a
database system to keep track of this or just a file card approach.  If
you use a DB, this information could be entered into a relational database
for scanning purposes (Dbase perhaps).  This would not provide an automatic
mechanism for processing the photographs, but its a start.  Additional ideas
would be to implement an expert system as front end to this process.  The
expert system could be trained to ask the right questions about a photograph
to get a good classification.  On top of this could be added a laser scanner
(for about $3K) that would bring the photo into the database; there may be
database systems that would allow you to store the image of the whale right in
the database (I know the Amiga databases can).  Think about it, you can build
up from a basic capability, but don't try to do the whole thing at once.
				David_Bat_Masterson@cup.portal.com