An essential step in this kind of research is to quantify the shape of the wings, their subdomains (known as cells), and the location of the junctions (also known as joints, vein joints or micro joints). Many studies have aimed to quantify the link between the morphology of the wings and flight performance of insects, including the migratory behaviour 2, 3, 4, aerodynamic force generation 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, territory defence and resource holding 10, mating behaviour 11, manoeuvrability and agility 8, 12 and damage tolerance 7, 13. Insect wings have various shapes and venation patterns 1, 2. Being an open-access resource, WingGram has a unique application to expand how scientists, educators, and industry professionals analyse insect wings and similar shell structures in other fields, such as aerospace. Allowing researchers to simply model wings with a variety of forms, shapes and sizes, our application can facilitate studies of insect wing morphology and biomechanics.

WingGram can extract geometric features of the wings, including dimensions of the wing domain and subdomains and the location of vein junctions. The app can be used to develop wing models that include complex venations, corrugations and camber. This application, called WingGram, uses computer vision to detect the boundaries of wings and wing cells from a 2D image. Here we address this challenge by developing a new tool for fast, precise modelling of insect wings. Hence, numerical studies in this area have often accompanied oversimplified models. Considering the complexities of insect wings, developing a wing model is usually error-prone and time-consuming. This has made the finite element method popular in studies of wing biomechanics. This is especially true for examining delicate museum specimens. Despite extensive research on the biomechanics of insect wings over the past years, direct mechanical measurements on sensitive wing specimens remain very challenging.

Importing image into wings 3d