{
  "abstract": "Surface phenotyping underpins plant science, preclinical animal research and entomology, yet across all three the measurement is almost always a photograph, which records a projection and not the surface itself. Here we present the Gentschinator3000, an open structured-light platform that brings high-end metric surface measurement within reach of laboratories with no optics expertise, combining documented open hardware, open reconstruction software and analysis workflows for under 4000 Euro in components. It resolves a planar reference to 45 m local flatness, registers full rotations to a loop closure of 156 m, and performs stably across acquisition ranges that we define. Applying one workflow to a leaf before and after desiccation, to murine anatomy and to a spread lepidopteran, we find that projection underestimates surface area by 11 to 41 %. That error grows with the condition under study, with the evaluation scale and with the direction of view, so it can confound phenotype comparisons dramatically. In murine limbs a 15-degree change of viewing direction shifts a projected inter-segment angle by up to 23.2 degrees, while the three-dimensional angle does not move. Projection geometry can therefore contribute as much to a measured phenotype as the biology it is meant to quantify.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Friedrich Schiller University Jena"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 8,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "G. J. Gentsch"
    },
    {
      "name": "M. Guo"
    },
    {
      "name": "A. Platz"
    },
    {
      "name": "G. Brehm"
    },
    {
      "name": "J. C. Hennings"
    },
    {
      "name": "C. A. Huebner"
    },
    {
      "name": "A. W. Stark"
    },
    {
      "name": "C. Franke"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/97vecazvfezfp.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.08.30.748077",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.30.748077v1.full",
  "id": "97vecazvfezfp",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.30.748077v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "bioengineering"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1707|Optical measurement and interference techniques"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7204839919",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.30.748077v1.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-08-30",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/97vecazvfezfp.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:37Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.08.30.748077",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.30.748077v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:bioengineering",
      "subfield": "systems-synthetic"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Democratizing three-dimensional surface phenotyping: an open structured-light platform reveals and removes the projection bias in biological imaging",
  "title_text": "Democratizing three-dimensional surface phenotyping: an open structured-light platform reveals and removes the projection bias in biological imaging",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:37Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/97vecazvfezfp",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}