Visualizing 3D data obtained from microscopy on the Internet

The Internet is a powerful communication medium increasingly exploited by b usiness and science alike, especially in structural biology and bioinformat ics. The traditional presentation of static two-dimensional images of real- world objects on the limited medium of paper can now be shown interactively in three dimensions. Many facets of this new capability have already been developed, particularly in the form of VRML (virtual reality modeling langu age), but there is a need to extend this capability for visualizing scienti fic data, Here we introduce a real-time isosurfacing node for VRML, based o n the marching cube approach, allowing interactive isosurfacing, A second m ode does three-dimensional (3D) texture-based volume-rendering for a variet y of representations. The use of computers in the microscopic and structura l biosciences is extensive, and many scientific file formats exist, To over come the problem of accessing such data from VRML and other tools, we imple mented extensions to SGI's IFL (image format library), IFL is a file format abstraction layer defining communication between a program and a data file . These technologies are developed in support of the BioImage project, aimi ng to establish a database prototype for multidimensional microscopic data with the ability to view the data within a 3D interactive environment. (C) 1999 Academic Press.