cellVIEW: a Tool for Illustrative and Multi-Scale Rendering of Large Biomolecular Datasets

Muzic, Mathieu Le; Autin, Ludovic; Parulek, Julius; Viola, Ivan

cellVIEW: a Tool for Illustrative and Multi-Scale Rendering of Large Biomolecular Datasets

Files

061-070.pdf (13.86 MB)

Date

2015

Authors

Muzic, Mathieu Le
Autin, Ludovic
Parulek, Julius
Viola, Ivan

Publisher

The Eurographics Association

Abstract

In this article we introduce cellVIEW, a new system to interactively visualize large biomolecular datasets on the atomic level. Our tool is unique and has been specifically designed to match the ambitions of our domain experts to model and interactively visualize structures comprised of several billions atom. The cellVIEW system integrates acceleration techniques to allow for real-time graphics performance of 60 Hz display rate on datasets representing large viruses and bacterial organisms. Inspired by the work of scientific illustrators, we propose a level-of-detail scheme which purpose is two-fold: accelerating the rendering and reducing visual clutter. The main part of our datasets is made out of macromolecules, but it also comprises nucleic acids strands which are stored as sets of control points. For that specific case, we extend our rendering method to support the dynamic generation of DNA strands directly on the GPU. It is noteworthy that our tool has been directly implemented inside a game engine. We chose to rely on a third party engine to reduce software development work-load and to make bleeding-edge graphics techniques more accessible to the end-users. To our knowledge cellVIEW is the only suitable solution for interactive visualization of large bimolecular landscapes on the atomic level and is freely available to use and extend.

        @inproceedings{10.2312:vcbm.20151209
,
booktitle = {Eurographics Workshop on Visual Computing for Biology and Medicine
},
editor = {Katja Bühler and Lars Linsen and Nigel W. John
},
title = {{cellVIEW: a Tool for Illustrative and Multi-Scale Rendering of Large Biomolecular Datasets
}},
author = {Muzic, Mathieu Le and 
Autin, Ludovic and 
Parulek, Julius and 
Viola, Ivan
},
year = {2015
},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association
},
ISSN = {2070-5786
},
ISBN = {978-3-905674-82-8
},
DOI = {10.2312/vcbm.20151209
}
}