Automated curation and museum archiving of large-scale tomography data for scientific research

Tomography is a technique used to image the three-dimensional structure of an object by cutting it into parallel two-dimensional slices. This technique has many applications to scientific research, but preserving tomography datasets for scientific repeatability poses considerable logistical and financial challenges. Conventional curation of fundamental tomography data and associated metadata demands long working-person hours because there is no standardized, easy-to-use software. Tomography datasets often exceed 1,000 files, and these large dataset sizes exceed the capacity of open online data repositories, and archiving these data locally demands abundant disk storage. Here, we present a new cost-effective software and hardware developed to facilitate the large-scale curation of tomography data. Our user-friendly software processes RAW tomography data, generates flipbook-style animations, and outputs metadata tables, while a cluster of desktop computers ensures efficient execution. Data are stored on magnetic tapes for robust long-term archiving. This comprehensive, open-source method is designed for easy adoption, especially in museums. It is compatible with the distribution of lightweight 3D models with open data repositories, mirroring the relationship between publishing research papers by publishers and archiving the described specimens by museums. It supports scientific integrity, particularly in the establishment of new species in natural history sciences.