Case study: Visualization of mechanical properties and deformations of living cells

Abstract

This case study shows how mechanical properties (like elasticity or attenuation) of living biological cells can be visually revealed by applying three- dimensional and animated visualization techniques. The benefits of these techniques over visualization methodologies used so far are discussed and experiences with end users from the application domain of cell biology are reported. In addition, this case study describes how visualization techniques can support the pre-processing of the underlying data that was collected using ultrasound microscopy. The case study provides an example how invisible mechanical properties of objects can be made visible in the context of a specific application domain. And the case study provides some experience how end user acceptance can be achieved by using visualization techniques not only for presenting the resulting data but also for the data pre-processing step.