R2OBBIE-3D: scanning Life with high resolution

In a paper recently published in PLOS ONE, the laboratory of Prof. Michel Milinkovitch reports on R²OBBIE-3D, a robotic integrated system that generates accurate 3D models of biological objects.

This robotic system combines an articulated arm, a high-resolution digital colour camera, an illumination basket of high-intensity light-emitting diodes and state-of-the-art 3D-reconstruction approaches. R²OBBIE allows to:

• generate accurate 3D models of biological objects
• perform multiview photometric stereo scanning possible in practical processing times
• capture colour-texture and geometry with resolutions better than 15 µm without the use of magnifying lenses.

While recent imaging techniques provide insights into biological processes from the molecular to the cellular scale, phenotypes at larger scales remain poorly amenable to quantitative analyses.

For example, investigations of the biophysical mechanisms generating skin morphological complexity and diversity would greatly benefit from 3D geometry and colour-texture reconstructions.

This is, to our knowledge, the only existing system that allows scanning the 3D geometry and colour texture of a living animal up to 1.5m with a resolution of 15 microns… hence, covering 5 orders of magnitude!

R²OBBIE has the potential to greatly improve quantitative analyses of phenotypes in addition to providing multiple new applications in, e.g., biomedical science.

• R2OBBIE webpage