Microfossil Analyses: New Technologies and Applications
“SASHIMI (System for Automated Scanning and High-resolution Imaging of MIcrofossils) is a low-cost device designed to capture 2D images of microfossils and particles. It is equipped with a Basler camera mounted on a motorized XY stage. This system enables Z-stack imaging of particles, with a resolution of ~5 µm.
The automaton MiSo (Microfossil Sorter) is fully controlled by a dedicated software which handles the control of the automaton (set-up, calibration, troubleshooting), management of the sample processing (carrousel description, metadata input, sorting rules by size and neural networks outputs), control of camera settings, image processing (segmentation, collation, depth-stacking, background subtraction), CNN models handling (pb, onnx), live vizualisation, error controlling. This software is licensed to ATG Technologies and available with new MiSo machines. Current version is 3.1, and works on Windows OS.
Complex natural materials (sediments & food products), or from industry (waste) need to be sorted for their analysis and recovery. CEREGE has developed with ATG Technologies, a SME specialized in robotics, a microparticle sorting automaton, capable of sorting microorganisms thanks to image recognition based on convolutional neural networks (patent pending, Marchant & al, 2020). This automaton, MicroFossil Sorter (MiSo), the first in the world, is routinely used at CEREGE to image and sort microfossils and waste residues. This automaton is the basis of a second version of the sorter including X-ray detectors [Equipex+ IMAGINE-2, financed]. Nevertheless, the increase in power of microparticle sorting also requires the development of new treatment processes in addition to these new sensors. The objective of the MicroTrEE project is to develop with ATG a new generation of intelligent sorting automatons that will (i) maintain AMU & ATG’s lead in the field by incorporating 3D, parallelizing the processing chains, incorporating ML algorithms to manage each chain and robotize the cleaning of the automaton, but also (ii) develop new applications in environment, paleoenvironments and mining exploration.
Funding : A*MIDEX Foundation
Partners : CEREGE & ATG Technologies
Dates : 2024-2026
PI : Thibault de Garidel-Thoron, CEREGE
