Immersive analytics for oncology patient cohorts

This thesis proposes a novel interactive immersive analytics tool and methods to interrogate the cancer patient cohort in an immersive virtual environment, namely Virtual Reality to Observe Oncology data Models (VROOM). The overall objective is to develop an immersive analytics platform, which includes a data analytics pipeline from raw gene expression data to immersive visualisation on virtual and augmented reality platforms utilising a game engine. Unity3D has been used to implement the visualisation. Work in this thesis could provide oncologists and clinicians with an interactive visualisation and visual analytics platform that helps them to drive their analysis in treatment efficacy and achieve the goal of evidence-based personalised medicine. The thesis integrates the latest discovery and development in cancer patients’ prognoses, immersive technologies, machine learning, decision support system and interactive visualisation to form an immersive analytics platform of complex genomic data. For this thesis, the experimental paradigm that will be followed is in understanding transcriptomics in cancer samples. This thesis specifically investigates gene expression data to determine the biological similarity revealed by the patient's tumour samples' transcriptomic profiles revealing the active genes in different patients. In summary, the thesis contributes to i) a novel immersive analytics platform for patient cohort data interrogation in similarity space where the similarity space is based on the patient's biological and genomic similarity; ii) an effective immersive environment optimisation design based on the usability study of exocentric and egocentric visualisation, audio and sound design optimisation; iii) an integration of trusted and familiar 2D biomedical visual analytics methods into the immersive environment; iv) novel use of the game theory as the decision-making system engine to help the analytics process, and application of the optimal transport theory in missing data imputation to ensure the preservation of data distribution; and v) case studies to showcase the real-world application of the visualisation and its effectiveness

Grand Challenges in Immersive Analytics

The definitive version will be published in CHI 2021, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, JapanInternational audienceImmersive Analytics is a quickly evolving field that unites several areas such as visualisation, immersive environments, and humancomputer interaction to support human data analysis with emerging technologies. This research has thrived over the past years with multiple workshops, seminars, and a growing body of publications, spanning several conferences. Given the rapid advancement of interaction technologies and novel application domains, this paper aims toward a broader research agenda to enable widespread adoption. We present 17 key research challenges developed over multiple sessions by a diverse group of 24 international experts, initiated from a virtual scientific workshop at ACM CHI 2020. These challenges aim to coordinate future work by providing a systematic roadmap of current directions and impending hurdles to facilitate productive and effective applications for Immersive Analytics

Review of innovative immersive technologies for healthcare applications

Immersive technologies, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), can connect people using enhanced data visualizations to better involve stakeholders as integral members of the process. Immersive technologies have started to change the research on multidimensional genomic data analysis for disease diagnostics and treatments. Immersive technologies are highlighted in some research for health and clinical needs, especially for precision medicine innovation. The use of immersive technology for genomic data analysis has recently received attention from the research community. Genomic data analytics research seeks to integrate immersive technologies to build more natural human-computer interactions that allow better perception engagements. Immersive technologies, especially VR, help humans perceive the digital world as real and give learning output with lower performance errors and higher accuracy. However, there are limited reviews about immersive technologies used in healthcare and genomic data analysis with specific digital health applications. This paper contributes a comprehensive review of using immersive technologies for digital health applications, including patient-centric applications, medical domain education, and data analysis, especially genomic data visual analytics. We highlight the evolution of a visual analysis using VR as a case study for how immersive technologies step, can by step, move into the genomic data analysis domain. The discussion and conclusion summarize the current immersive technology applications’ usability, innovation, and future work in the healthcare domain, and digital health data visual analytics

Molecular simulations and visualization: introduction and overview

Here we provide an introduction and overview of current progress in the field of molecular simulation and visualization, touching on the following topics: (1) virtual and augmented reality for immersive molecular simulations; (2) advanced visualization and visual analytic techniques; (3) new developments in high performance computing; and (4) applications and model building

Immersive Insights: A Hybrid Analytics System for Collaborative Exploratory Data Analysis

In the past few years, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies have experienced terrific improvements in both accessibility and hardware capabilities, encouraging the application of these devices across various domains. While researchers have demonstrated the possible advantages of AR and VR for certain data science tasks, it is still unclear how these technologies would perform in the context of exploratory data analysis (EDA) at large. In particular, we believe it is important to better understand which level of immersion EDA would concretely benefit from, and to quantify the contribution of AR and VR with respect to standard analysis workflows. In this work, we leverage a Dataspace reconfigurable hybrid reality environment to study how data scientists might perform EDA in a co-located, collaborative context. Specifically, we propose the design and implementation of Immersive Insights, a hybrid analytics system combining high-resolution displays, table projections, and augmented reality (AR) visualizations of the data. We conducted a two-part user study with twelve data scientists, in which we evaluated how different levels of data immersion affect the EDA process and compared the performance of Immersive Insights with a state-of-the-art, non-immersive data analysis system.Comment: VRST 201

2D, 2.5D, or 3D? An Exploratory Study on Multilayer Network Visualisations in Virtual Reality

Relational information between different types of entities is often modelled by a multilayer network (MLN) -- a network with subnetworks represented by layers. The layers of an MLN can be arranged in different ways in a visual representation, however, the impact of the arrangement on the readability of the network is an open question. Therefore, we studied this impact for several commonly occurring tasks related to MLN analysis. Additionally, layer arrangements with a dimensionality beyond 2D, which are common in this scenario, motivate the use of stereoscopic displays. We ran a human subject study utilising a Virtual Reality headset to evaluate 2D, 2.5D, and 3D layer arrangements. The study employs six analysis tasks that cover the spectrum of an MLN task taxonomy, from path finding and pattern identification to comparisons between and across layers. We found no clear overall winner. However, we explore the task-to-arrangement space and derive empirical-based recommendations on the effective use of 2D, 2.5D, and 3D layer arrangements for MLNs.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, In press, To appear. Accepted to IEEE VIS 202

Baseline analysis of a conventional and virtual reality lifelog retrieval system

Continuous media capture via a wearable devices is currently one of the most popular methods to establish a comprehensive record of the entirety of an individual's life experience, referred to in the research community as a lifelog. These vast multimodal corpora include visual and other sensor data and are enriched by content analysis, to generate as extensive a record of an individual's life experience. However, interfacing with such datasets remains an active area of research, and despite the advent of new technology and a plethora of competing mediums for processing digital information, there has been little focus on newly emerging platforms such as virtual reality. In this work, we suggest that the increase in immersion and spatial dimensions provided by virtual reality could provide significant benefits to users when compared to more conventional access methodologies. Hence, we motivate virtual reality as a viable method of exploring multimedia archives (specifically lifelogs) by performing a baseline comparative analysis using a novel application prototype built for the HTC Vive and a conventional prototype built for a standard personal computer

THE SEDUCTION OF THE SIMULATION. 3D MODELLING AND STORYTELLING OF UNREALIZED PERUGIA RAIL STATION

Abstract. The study aims at enhancing and requalifying the area of Fontivegge in Perugia. It seeks to instil in the population a sense of identity and belonging to the place through the digital reconstruction of the first design hypothesis of the station itself, transmitting the cultural heritage of the place with new participatory methods, such as serious games and virtual reality. Starting from the project drawings preserved at the academy of San Luca in Rome, conceived by the architect Antonio Cipolla, the project is reconstructed philologically following historical and archival studies, by interpreting the data collected. Following the reconstruction of the 3D model, evocative mook up images and a virtual reality are created, making the intangible tangible and explorable. Through the virtual simulation of the place and its visualisation, new forms of participation are sought, mending the relationship between territory and population, laying the foundations for a different reading of the area and a cultural heritage accessible and open to all