NewVision: A program for interactive navigation and analysis of multiple 3-D data sets using coordinated virtual cameras

We describe 'NewVision', a program designed for rapid interactive display, sectioning, and comparison of multiple large three-dimensional (3-D) reconstructions. User tools for navigating within large 3-D data sets and selecting local subvolumes for display, combined with view caching, fast integer interpolation, and background tasking, provide highly interactive viewing of arbitrarily sized data sets on Silicon Graphics systems ranging from simple workstations to supercomputers. Multiple windows, each showing different views of the same 3-D data set, are coordinated through mapping of local coordinate systems to a single global world coordinate system. Mapping to a world coordinate system allows quantitative measurements from any open window as well as creation of linked windows in which operations such as panning, zooming, and 3-D rotations of the viewing perspective in any one window are mirrored by corresponding transformations in the views shown in other linked windows. The specific example of tracing 3-D fiber trajectories is used to demonstrate the potential of the linked window concept. A global overview of NewVision's design and organization is provided, and future development directions are briefly discussed.