Wayne Warren

Today’s biomedical research endeavors often entail exposure to a daunting amount of expressive data which must be effectively comprehended and communicated. It has been well established that visualization is a powerful conduit for analyzing, representing, and communicating such information. Since these data are often associated with structures of anatomy that can be represented as computer-generated 3D models, the biomedical atlas can be leveraged as an effective visualization motif. This style of presentation not only conveys spatial relationships among the data, but also provides a natural representation which is easily understood by a wide audience. Many systems have been produced which can be considered computer-based biomedical atlases, some of which have been used to visualize data and to illustrate spatially complex concepts. However, the development of these systems has been costly due to the fact that many, while similar in features and design, have been built from the ground up as single-purpose applications. A next-generation visualization system, Biolucida, has been developed as a generalizable framework which is designed to meet the visualization needs of the biomedical community through its comprehensive feature set and its extensible architecture.