The NIH/NIGMS
Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing

The SCI Institute is proud to announce the availability of SCIRun on the Silicon Graphics PrismTM visualization system. The combination of large memory, parallel CPUs and advanced graphics capabilities on the Silicon Graphics Prism provide an ideal platform for the SCIRun problem solving environment. The modular nature of the Silicon Graphics Prism allows scaling to meet the computational needs of the most demanding SCIRun users.

Using SCIRun's advanced volume rendering PowerApp 'BioImage' we are able to fully exploit the powerful graphics capabilities of the Prism system. The combination with BioImage, the Prism's graphics capabilities and a 64-bit architecture allow for interactive visualization of very large datasets.

bioimage SCIRun's BioImage Visualization Software.  A dataset showing a cross section of a computed tomography scan of the chest is shown using the SCI Institute's BioImage.  The dataset, Dr. George Chen's group at Mass. General Hospital, is viewable interactively using the combination of the Silicon Graphics Prism system and SCI's BioImage.  This visualization requires advanced graphics such as fragment shaders and other advanced GPU functions.  The combination of these features and the ability to handle large datasets makes the Prism system an highly effective system for the SCI Institute research mission.


Additionally, SCI has also ported the Insight toolkit (ITK) and the visualization toolkit (VTK) to the Silicon Graphics Prism system.  A Silicon Graphics Prism system located at the SCI Institute provides the platform for the nightly builds of both ITK and VTK.

prism deskside
The Silicon Graphics PrismTM Deskside