It’s hard to view 3D data on a 2D screen efficiently which is why Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR) have so many fans as they allow us to interact with data in 3D, making it more intuitive and easier to process (for some use cases). Now there is another application for VR that actually makes sense and is not just hype. Researchers at University of Cambridge & Lume VR Ltd have managed to convert super-high resolution microscopy data into a format that can be visualized in VR.
Till 2014 it was assumed that we could never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. The Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014 managed to work around this limitation creating a new field called Super-resolution microscopy that allows us to obtain images at nanoscale. This enables us to see the individual molecules inside cells to track proteins involved in various diseases or watch fertilized eggs as they divide into embryos. Combining this with the technology from Lume VR allows us to visualize and interact with the biological data in real time.
Walking through the cells gives you a different perspective and since the data is near real time it allows us to literally watch the cell’s reaction to a particular stimuli. This will have massive implications for the Biomed/BioTech fields. Maybe we can use it to figure out why organ rejections happen or what causes Alzheimer’s.
“Data generated from super-resolution microscopy is extremely complex,” said Kitching. “For scientists, running analysis on this data can be very time-consuming. With vLUME, we have managed to vastly reduce that wait time allowing for more rapid testing and analysis.”
The team is mostly using vLUME with biological datasets, such as neurons, immune cells or cancer cells. For example, Lee’s group has been studying how antigen cells trigger an immune response in the body. “Through segmenting and viewing the data in vLUME, we’ve quickly been able to rule out certain hypotheses and propose new ones,” said Lee. This software allows researchers to explore, analyse, segment and share their data in new ways. All you need is a VR headset.”
Interestingly vLUME is available for download as an Open Source program from their Git repository. The program is free free-for-academic-use. Check it out if you are interested in how it works.
Source: New virtual reality software allows scientists to ‘walk’ inside cells
– Suramya