Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
Visualization and User Interaction Methods
for Multiscale Biomedical Data
Ricardo Manuel Millán Vaquero, Jan Rzepecki, Karl-Ingo Friese
and Franz-Erich Wolter
5.1 Introduction
Biological processes in the human body interact continuously in order to sustain
physiological function. A complete study of a phenomenon in human physiology
requires merging data from several measurements, not only from different domains
of knowledge (chemistry, biology, physics, and medicine) but also across different
spatiotemporal scales. As an example, a musculoskeletal disease of the human knee
affecting themotion (behavior scale), can be seen on a CT orMRI scan (organic scale)
and has its cause on cellular or evenmolecular level. To simulate the related processes,
different temporal scales have to be taken into account as well. Those time scales
range from seconds on the behavioral level to microseconds on the cellular scale.
However, merging of data alone is not enough to obtain valuable knowledge.
Visualization that generates images from these measurements is necessary to help
scientists understanding complex relations between modalities and spatiotemporal
scales. Multiscale visualization deals with the question: “How can visualization help
in extracting information from several scales that cannot be attained or understood by
traditional techniques?” More specifically, multiscale visualization will also support
extracting information that cannot be obtained or understood from evaluating data
from a single scale alone or even from different scales without having the flexibility
