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When physical unfolding/unrolling of papyri is not possible or too dangerous for preserving the precious object, tomographic approaches may be the ap- propriate alternative. Requirements are the resolution and the contrast to distinguish writing and substrate. The steps to be performed are the following: (1) Select the object of interest (archaeological arguments, cultural back- ground of the object, etc.). (2) Find the proper physical procedure, especially with respect to contrast, take the tomographic data, e.g. by absorption x-ray tomography. (3) Apply mathematical unfolding transformations to the tomographic data, in order to obtain a 2d-planar reconstruction of text.
Geometric morphometrics plays an important role in evolutionary studies. The state-of-the-art in this field are landmark-based methods. Since the landmarks usually need to be placed manually, only a limited number of landmarks are generally used to represent the shape of an anatomical structure. As a result, shape characteristics that cannot be properly represented by small sets of landmarks are disregarded.
In this study, we present a method that is free of this limitation. The method takes into account the whole shape of an anatomical structure, which is represented as a surface, hence the term ‘surface-based morphometrics’. Correspondence between two surfaces is established by defining a partitioning of the surfaces into homologous surface patches. The first step for the generation of a surface partitioning is to place landmarks on the surface. Subsequently, the landmarks are connected by curves lying on the surface. The curves, called ‘surface paths’, might either follow specific anatomical features or they can be geodesics, that is, shortest paths on the surface. One important requirement, however, is that the resulting surface path networks are topologically equivalent across all surfaces. Once the surface path networks have been defined, the surfaces are decomposed into patches according to the path networks.
This approach has several advantages. One of them is that we can discretize the surface by as many points as desired. Thus, even fine shape details can be resolved if this is of interest for the study. Since a point discretization is used, another advantage is that well-established analysis methods for landmark-based morphometrics can be utilized. Finally, the shapes can be easily morphed into one another, thereby greatly supporting the understanding of shape changes across all considered specimens.
To show the potential of the described method for evolutionary studies of biological specimens, we applied the method to the para-basisphenoid complex of the snake genus Eirenis. By using this anatomical structure as example, we present all the steps that are necessary for surface-based morphometrics, including the segmentation of the para-basisphenoid complex from micro-CT data sets. We also show some first results using statistical analysis as well as classification methods based on the presented technique.
Visualization grammars are gaining popularity as they allow visualization specialists and experienced users to quickly create static and interactive views. Existing grammars, however, mostly focus on abstract views, ignoring three-dimensional (3D) views, which are very important in fields such as natural sciences. We propose a generalized interaction grammar for the problem of coordinating heterogeneous view types, such as standard charts (e.g., based on Vega-Lite) and 3D anatomical views. An important aspect of our web-based framework is that user interactions with data items at various levels of detail can be systematically integrated and used to control the overall layout of the application workspace. With the help of a concise JSON-based specification of the intended workflow, we can handle complex interactive visual analysis scenarios. This enables rapid prototyping and iterative refinement of the visual analysis tool in collaboration with domain experts. We illustrate the usefulness of our framework in two real-world case studies from the field of neuroscience. Since the logic of the presented grammar-based approach for handling interactions between heterogeneous web-based views is free of any application specifics, it can also serve as a template for applications beyond biological research.
The analysis of brain networks is central to neurobiological research. In this context the following tasks often arise: (1) understand the cellular composition of a reconstructed neural tissue volume to determine the nodes of the brain network; (2) quantify connectivity features statistically; and (3) compare these to predictions of mathematical models. We present a framework for interactive, visually supported accomplishment of these tasks. Its central component, the stratification matrix viewer, allows users to visualize the distribution of cellular and/or connectional properties of neurons at different levels of aggregation. We demonstrate its use in four case studies analyzing neural network data from the rat barrel cortex and human temporal cortex.
Structural properties of molecules are of primary concern in many fields. This report provides a comprehensive overview on techniques that have been developed in the fields of molecular graphics and visualization with a focus on applications in structural biology. The field heavily relies on computerized geometric and visual representations of three-dimensional, complex, large, and time-varying molecular structures. The report presents a taxonomy that demonstrates which areas of molecular visualization have already been extensively investigated and where the field is currently heading. It discusses visualizations for molecular structures, strategies for efficient display regarding image quality and frame rate, covers different aspects of level of detail, and reviews visualizations illustrating the dynamic aspects of molecular simulation data. The report concludes with an outlook on promising and important research topics to enable further success in advancing the knowledge about interaction of molecular structures.
In molecular structure analysis and visualization, the molecule’s atoms are often modeled as hard spheres parametrized by their positions and radii. While the atom positions result from experiments or molecular simulations, for the radii typically values are taken from literature. Most often, van der Waals (vdW) radii are used, for which diverse values exist. As a consequence, different visualization and analysis tools use different atomic radii, and the analyses are less objective than often believed. Furthermore, for the geometric accessibility analysis of molecular structures, vdW radii are not well suited. The reason is that during the molecular dynamics simulation, depending on the force field and the kinetic energy in the system, non-bonded atoms can come so close to each other that their vdW spheres intersect. In this paper, we introduce a new kind of atomic radius, called atomic accessibility radius’, that better characterizes the accessibility of an atom in a given molecular trajectory. The new radii reflect the movement possibilities of atoms in the simulated physical system. They are computed by solving a linear program that maximizes the radii of the atoms under the constraint that non-bonded spheres do not intersect in the considered molecular trajectory. Using this data-driven approach, the actual accessibility of atoms can be visualized more precisely.