Otolith Image Processing Library (OIPL)

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The OIPL will assist researchers in identifying fish remains based on images of their otoliths. It is primarily aimed at researchers conducting stomach content analysis, to identify partially digested fish remains from the otoliths, but may also be of use to archaeologists and paleontologists.

To use, simply “Choose File” above to navigate and select an image file of an unknown otolith (JPG, BMP, TIF, PNG), and “Upload Image”. The machine learning algorithms we developed will then compare your unknown image to our library and return the best 9 matches. The OIPL currently contains over 4200 images from 102 taxa of common estuarine and inshore fishes of the central northern Gulf of Mexico. Users can browse the full image library to evaluate the results. Note, this is a tool to assist researchers. The closest match is not always correct, every image you upload will generate matches, but your species may not be represented in our library.

We have developed a simple Guide to Otolith Imaging to assist users in producing images suitable for analysis by the OIPL. The tool will build a table of results, collating all outputs from each session, allowing users to upload and identify multiple images in a session, and then export the results.

With further funding we will expand the library to more species and regions, and broaden the functionality, including allowing users to input the mass of their otolith to estimate the size of the fish it came from, based on otolith weight-fish length regressions we developed. Additional functions will allow users to upload and compare multiple images of otoliths to quantify symmetry.

Please cite as:
Baker R, David P, Heflin E, Lechervy A, Tschumperle D (2026) Otolith Image Processing Library. www.disl.edu/research/oipl/

Questions, comments, feedback, want to contribute? Email: rbaker@disl.org

Attribution

This project was paid for [in part] with federal funding for the Alabama Center of Excellence from the Department of the Treasury under the Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States Act of 2012 (RESTORE Act) in cooperation with the State of Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources under the Alabama Center of Excellence Program at the MESC/Dauphin Island Sea Lab.