Arizona State Researchers Gain Speed and Accuracy for Wildlife Studies with CapSure® Digital Imaging Solution

Arizona State University (ASU) is one of the premier metropolitan research universities in the nation, an institution of international scope, committed to excellence in teaching, research, and public service. Research at ASU spans the spectrum of disciplines in the humanities, the natural sciences, the social sciences, the visual and performing arts, and the fields of technology, complemented by distinguished professional programs in such fields as architecture and environmental design, business, and law. ASU today is poised to become a global center for innovative interdisciplinary research.

The Department of Applied Biological Sciences offers rigorous and practical programs in applications of the biological sciences. Consistent with a polytechnic vision, programs involve extensive student interaction with faculty through experience-based learning activities, including laboratories, field trips, internships and faculty-guided research and service-learning projects. Mastery of fundamental biological principles is emphasized through quality learning in the classroom and hands-on activities in laboratories and in the living laboratories of the Sonoran desert and surrounding ecosystems (as well as the landscape of the greater Phoenix area).

Situation
To help uphold the university’s goal to become a global center for innovative interdisciplinary research, the Department of Applied Biological Sciences focuses time on a wide range of significant research. In late 2006, Dr. William H. Miller, associate professor for the Department of Applied Biological Sciences at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic Campus, led a team of graduate and doctoral students in studies to help understand the correlation between land management and wildlife survivability.

Dr. Miller’s research consisted of a targeted study of the plant species composition of animal diets. Manipulating micro-histological analyses to examine the diet composition, blood parameters and nutrient analysis of each species was a tedious process.

“Our research usually consisted of staring through a microscope to determine diet composition based on plant epidermal fragments,” remarked Dr. Miller. “When you’re staring through a microscope eight hours a day, you end up with a lot of eye fatigue and strain. There are as many as 100 different plant species possible in a given diet; in order to evaluate which species you’re looking at, you’re constantly switching and comparing different slides.”

To do a really comprehensive study, it would take Dr. Miller and his team nearly six months to determine diet. On top of that, students needed a four-month period to learn plants. By the time a given study was finished, nearly a year would pass.

The GlobalMed Solution
The university had just built new classrooms at the Polytechnic campus, and Dr. Miller stumbled across a technology used instructionally in biology classes. “When I first came across this teaching aid, I thought about how great it would be to apply to the research environment.” What eventually materialized was the implementation of GlobalMed’s CapSure® digital imaging solution for Dr. Miller’s research.

After evaluating the solution, Dr. Miller decided it would be the perfect tool for enhancing the team’s research capabilities while giving students the chance to be more hands-on with close guidance from ASU professors.

CapSure is a real-time image acquisition, collaboration and information management software that helps facilitate prompt interpretation, immediate collaboration and reduced time allocation. With the CapSure system, Dr. Miller and his research team can take large game nutrition research to a whole new level; for instance, students and professors can more effectively engage in the learning process throughout the research.

The CapSure system gives students the ability to analyze specimens with better accuracy while broadening access to previous research and findings with simple archival options. Overall, the classroom environment has been transformed into a much more hands-on and engaging one, courtesy of CapSure.

Dr. Miller added, “We’ve been able to perform five major studies manipulating the CapSure system. We’re currently in the process of finishing up a study on the winter range of mule deer in the North Kaibab Plateau where we’ve successfully looked at the species’ diets and nutrient quality.”

The CapSure system is perfect for on-site analysis and data collection. “All of these studies are performed in the field by undergrads and grads who collect fecal samples from the animal and vegetation samples from the terrain to bring back to the lab for analysis. We can bring CapSure along to our on-site labs for immediate analysis.”

Benefits
Dr. Miller has praised GlobalMed’s CapSure solution, noting that three critical processes within his research regimen, speed, accuracy and instruction, have been enhanced by this new solution. “CapSure® is a tool to get to the answer, because it provides accurate visual data,” Dr. Miller added. “The better the data, the better the answer.”

Rather than four months of visual training for students to learn fecal analysis, Dr. Miller says CapSure cuts the time by fifty percent or more, allotting an average of 30-60 days of training. “We simply put the voucher slide in, find the characteristics, capture the image and put it in a file for future reference. This builds the necessary documentation to teach and learn.”

Dr. Miller says the actual research time has been greatly quickened, with a reading time on a given diet moving from one week to 2-3 days. The time it takes to complete a study has been eased by greater than one half.

As an added bonus, Dr. Miller says other departments at the ASU Polytechnic Campus have had the opportunity to adopt the technology in their teaching and research. “A lot of microbiologists have bought the technology to use as a powerful teaching aid.”