NVIDIA outfits molecular imaging lab with display wall
In designing a new imaging facility, Center for Advanced Molecular Imaging (CAMI), Thomas J. Meade, PhD, professor of cancer research, chemistry, molecular biosciences, neurobiology & physiology and radiology at Chicago's Northwestern University, aimed to create a place for researchers and the public to view research being done at the university, through advanced visualization technologies.
“The vision we had was that of a place where everyone from undergrads to professors and researchers could interact with theoretical data in a unique way,” said Meade. “We had been thinking about an enormous 2D tiled panel, so that we could look at things very large, like an electronic poster.”
Matt McCrory, a visualization engineer working with Argonne National Laboratory, DreamWorks Animation and the University of Chicago, and lead visualization engineer for Northwestern University Information Technology, had a stereo 3D vision for CAMI.
NVIDIA Quadro Plex systems enable high-resolution, scalable, large-scale visualization environments. The NVIDIA Mosaic technology at the heart of the Quadro Plex enables applications to span across multiple displays or projectors, reducing the number of workstations needed to power the installation. NVIDIA Quadro Plex and Mosaic multidisplay technology both work in stereoscopic 3D as well, enabling researchers to immerse themselves into data.
“With 3D we could translate computational theoretical data that couldn’t be seen any other way,” McCrory said. “[V]isualizing high-resolution volumetric data with multiple time steps moves the processing from just three dimensions to four. You need massive amounts of processing power and memory to draw those images quickly enough to make visualization practical.”
The 3D display wall at CAMI supports visualizations including MRI, whole-body bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging, photon microscopy and scanning probe microscopy of live cells, and allows researchers to visualize data while studying molecular, cellular and tissue structures and interactions.
“The vision we had was that of a place where everyone from undergrads to professors and researchers could interact with theoretical data in a unique way,” said Meade. “We had been thinking about an enormous 2D tiled panel, so that we could look at things very large, like an electronic poster.”
Matt McCrory, a visualization engineer working with Argonne National Laboratory, DreamWorks Animation and the University of Chicago, and lead visualization engineer for Northwestern University Information Technology, had a stereo 3D vision for CAMI.
NVIDIA Quadro Plex systems enable high-resolution, scalable, large-scale visualization environments. The NVIDIA Mosaic technology at the heart of the Quadro Plex enables applications to span across multiple displays or projectors, reducing the number of workstations needed to power the installation. NVIDIA Quadro Plex and Mosaic multidisplay technology both work in stereoscopic 3D as well, enabling researchers to immerse themselves into data.
“With 3D we could translate computational theoretical data that couldn’t be seen any other way,” McCrory said. “[V]isualizing high-resolution volumetric data with multiple time steps moves the processing from just three dimensions to four. You need massive amounts of processing power and memory to draw those images quickly enough to make visualization practical.”
The 3D display wall at CAMI supports visualizations including MRI, whole-body bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging, photon microscopy and scanning probe microscopy of live cells, and allows researchers to visualize data while studying molecular, cellular and tissue structures and interactions.