X-ray microtomography, commonly known as computerized axial tomography or CAT scans, has been performed on bone samples of different animals, including pelican, antelope, and emu, to see the three-dimensional structure of the bone. Especially of interest are the internal Haversian canals, which contain blood vessels, nerves, and a variety of other cell types that depend on the canal's age. The initial projection data has been reconstructed using improved software and processed to allow both viewing of slice-by-slice movies using Shockwave Flash and three-dimensional virtual reality viewing using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). We also hope to obtain a graph representation of the Haversian network to analyze how it changes as the animals age.
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