Virtual reality software created by scientists at the University of Cambridge and 3D image analysis software company Lume VR Ltd has been launched.
The new software allows researchers to ‘walk’ inside and analyse individual cells in 3D, rather than data on a screen in 2D.
Called vLUME, it allows super-resolution microscopy data to be visualised and analysed in virtual reality, and can be used to study everything from individual proteins to entire cells. Details are published in the journal Nature Methods.
Dr Steven F Lee from Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry, who led the research, said: “Biology occurs in 3D, but up until now it has been difficult to interact with the data on a 2D computer screen in an intuitive and immersive way.”
“It wasn’t until we started seeing our data in virtual reality that everything clicked into place.”
Alexandre Kitching, CEO of Lume, said: “vLUME is revolutionary imaging software that brings humans into the nanoscale.”
“It allows scientists to visualise, question and interact with 3D biological data, in real time all within a virtual reality environment, to find answers to biological questions faster. It’s a new tool for new discoveries.”
The software allows multiple datasets with millions of data points to be loaded in and finds patterns in the complex data using in-built clustering algorithms. These findings can then be shared with collaborators using image and video in the software.
Kitching said:“Data generated from super-resolution microscopy is extremely complex. For scientists, running analysis on this data can be very time-consuming. With vLUME, we have managed to vastly reduce that wait time allowing for more rapid testing and analysis.”
The team is mostly using vLUME with biological datasets, such as neurons, immune cells or cancer cells, and the group has been studying how antigen cells trigger an immune response in the body.
