Initially an InfraVis pilot project, the VR lab at LTH has worked with Sridhar Halali, a researcher at the LU Dept. of Biology. As part of his work to understand how butterflies have evolved in response to environmental changes, Dr Halali has collected a dataset of microCT scans of butterflies. The specific trait of interest is in this case the shape of the head. It can, however, be a greatly time-consuming task to isolate body segments in a large 3-dimensional dataset using the 2D interface of the standard software (3D Slicer). This is where the VR Lab comes in, analyzing the problem, building on existing plugins for visualization and interaction in VR, and parallel processing to implement a solution to facilitate the task.

Outcomes

• A spherical tool with variable radius to erase geometry, controlled by a hand-held controller in VR.
• Multi-threading and optimizations to minimize latency and prevent the program from freezing when handling high-resolution data.