High resolution digital imaging system

Description

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) has a need for the supply and installation of a high-resolution digital imaging system, primarily for use within the Herbarium, to enhance our digitisation programme and to expand the scope of research carried out on our preserved collections. This advanced system is required to service 3 main areas of work and has the specified needs: As a world leader in exploring innovative and novel ways of digitising our 3 million herbarium specimens we aim to expand our digitisation infrastructure to include high resolution (4K) 2D images of herbarium specimens. To integrate with existing semi-automated pipelines, we require a system that is intuitive to use and easy to set-up. Our preserved collections underpin RBGEs response to the Biodiversity Crisis and Climate Emergency. The required imaging system will enable RBGE to routinely observe and digitally record 2D & 3D images of key anatomical features at a magnification not possible with a traditional stereomicroscope. An important consideration is the ability to capture cellular level observation of plant surfaces without the specialised and destructive processing necessary for ultra-high-resolution microscopy such as SEM. RBGE is a lead organisation in the development of DNA based methods for telling species apart, coordinating global efforts to build large-scale DNA reference libraries for plants. A key part of this reference library is the robust documentation of sample ID. To achieve this, we require an imaging system that is easy to operate, by people with varying degrees of training in microscopy/digital imagining. The outputs required from the high-resolution digital imaging system is the routine generation of high-resolution images and associated reports, produced by running Standard Operational Procedures, with the potential to semi-automate the process for integration into our digitisation workflows.