Tradeoffs in multi-channel microscopy volume visualization: an initial evaluation

In this paper, we describe two different pipelines for visualizing multi-channel cell image volumes. We obtained six different multichannel three-dimensional cell image datasets from the Cell Image Library (CIL); a freely-accessible online public repository of cell images. We processed these sets to create Segmented and Iso-Surface volume renderings. These two visualization pipelines were used to create animations such that same data can be viewed using both approaches side-by-side. A survey involving 50 anonymous participants was conducted to assess the suitability of Segmented or Iso-Surface volume rendering for the perception of proximity, connectivity and containment of two or more structures in a given volume. The Iso-Surface rendering was a winning choice for judging estimates of Proximity and Connectivity, while both approaches were rated equally useful for judgments of Containment in the 6 datasets tested.