Although digital methods have significantly advanced morphology, practitioners are still challenged to understand and process tomographic specimen data. As automated processing of fossil data remains insufficient, morphologists still engage in intensive manual work to prepare digital fossils for research objectives. We present an open-source tool that enables morphologists to explore tomographic data similarly to the physical workflows that traditional fossil preparators experience in the field. We assessed the usability of our prototype for virtual fossil preparation and its accompanying tasks in the digital preparation workflow. Our findings indicate that integrating haptics into the virtual preparation workflow enhances the understanding of the morphology and material properties of working specimens. Our design's visuohaptic sculpting of fossil volumes was deemed straightforward and an improvement over current tomographic data processing methods.

翻译：尽管数字方法已显著推进了形态学研究，但从业者在理解和处理断层扫描样本数据方面仍面临挑战。由于化石数据的自动化处理仍不充分，形态学家仍需投入大量手工劳动，以根据研究目标制备数字化石。我们提出一种开源工具，使形态学家能够以类似于传统化石修复人员在实地工作中所经历的物理工作流程来探索断层扫描数据。我们评估了该原型在虚拟化石修复及其在数字制备流程中伴随任务方面的可用性。我们的研究结果表明，将触觉技术整合到虚拟制备流程中，能够增强对工作样本形态和材料特性的理解。我们设计中对化石体积的视触觉雕刻被认为直观明了，是对当前断层扫描数据处理方法的改进。