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3:55 p.m., April 4, 2003--Entering DBI’s visualization studio is like walking into a small stand-up theatre equipped with a 100-square-foot screen. At first, a viewer sees superimposed, flat images, but special glasses change that dramatically and immerse the viewer in three-dimensional images, which can be rotated and moved by a handheld wand.
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| Karl V. Steiner, associate director of DBI, demonstrates the capabilities of the visualization studio for Patrick Koegel and Julian Keufer, visiting students from the University of Applied Sciences in Esslingen, Germany. |
The studio’s projectors are located in the rear of the screen so that viewers’ shadows will not interfere during the interaction with the images on the screen. An adjacent room in the bioinformatics center houses the institute’s large-scale computers, linked to instrumentation centers and the visualization studio.
The visualization studio has tremendous potential, according to Karl Steiner, associate director of DBI.
Among the research projects under way are immersive molecular modeling and interactive 3-D exploration of biomedical images. To this end, computed tomography data have been provided through a collaboration with Christiana Care Health System’s radiology department, and the visualization studio allows the viewer to perform a virtual endoscopy—an ear exam—by “flying” through the middle and inner ear.
The next step will be to expand this technology for the planning of surgical procedures, bringing together radiologists, surgeons, computer scientists and engineers.
“By complementing the database servers and compute clusters in the bioinformatics center, the visualization studio provides us with a unique tool for life sciences research,” Steiner said, “and this will allow us to explore new scientific methodologies that may not be possible at other institutions.”
Article by Sue Moncure
Photo by Eric Crossan
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