GUDMAP - An Online GenitoUrinary Resource

The GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project (GUDMAP) is a consortium of laboratories working to provide the scientific and medical community with gene expression data and tools to facilitate research (see "www.gudmap.org":http://www.gudmap.org). The data provided by GUDMAP includes large _in situ_ hybridization screens (wholemount and section) and expression microarray analysis of components of the developing mouse urogenital system (including laser-captured material and FACS-isolated cells from transgenic reporter mice). In addition, a high-resolution anatomy ontology has been developed by members of the GUDMAP consortium to describe the subcompartments of the developing murine genitourinary tract. 

The GUDMAP Database Development Team and Editorial Office - both based in Edinburgh - function to ensure submission, curation, storage and presentation of the data submitted by the GUDMAP consortium. Our collective aim is twofold: 1) to simplify the process of submission so that data is publically available as soon as it is produced; and 2) to organize this information in a database and ensure that the online interface is continuously available and easy to use. Thus far, we have developed a range of tools that help both the submitter and the end user. These include: an online annotation tool that simplifies _in situ_ data submission through an ontology-based graphical user interface; a database interface that allows users to browse and query expression data, and to filter data by organ system; a heat-map display of microarray data and analyses. Furthermore, the Edinburgh team has developed a GUDMAP Disease Database that queries associations between genes, genitourinary diseases, and renal/urinary and reproductive phenotypes. In collaboration with GUDMAP consortium members at the CCHMC (Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center), the Disease Database is being extended to include mammalian phenotypes mapped to OMIM entries. 

By virtue of its impressive dataset and its ease of use we hope that the GUDMAP Website will continue to serve as a powerful resource for biologists, clinicians and bioinformaticians with an interest in the urogenital system

Interactive Visualisation of a Virtual Colonoscopy

We present a novel acceleration technique for the volume ray casting process used in virtual colonoscopy. Our method exploits the information obtained from casting a ray to avoid redundant computations for neighbouring rays. A corridor from the image plane into the volume data set is examined whenever a ray is cast. All rays passing through this corridor reach the same cell as the first non-space intersected cell. We apply the distance information obtained from casting a ray to other rays in the same group. Using this distance it is possible to skip the space and start the ray casting integration from a nonspace cell. The group of rays is obtained by projecting the non-space cell intersected by the first ray in to the image plane. The method has been implemented on a personal computer and tested with the visible human data set and a synthetic colon data set. The amount of acceleration achievable using this method depends on the enlargement factor. There is some degradation in the quality of the image produced using this method, due to the approximation used to select the group of rays that reaches the same non-space cell