While an enormous high-definition screen is a dream of football fans and film buffs alike, the newly inaugurated Tufts Center for Scientific Visualization has implemented such a display in the name of a different field: science.
Inaugurated early last month and placed in Anderson Hall, the goal of the center for is to promote teaching and research throughout the Tufts community. The size and quality of projection onto the 14- by 8-foot screen is the first of its kind in New England, and possibly the United States, according to Lionel Zupan, associate director for research technology at Tufts.
In August of 2006, the National Science Foundation awarded $350,000 to Tufts for the purpose of acquiring such a scientific visualization facility. Led by Bruce Boghosian, a professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics, a team of Tufts professors and Information Technology staff was awarded the grant to build a one-of-a-kind high-definition visualization center to project research onto a screen.
Zupan has been extensively involved with the project since he came to Tufts in April of 2007. He said he believes the visualization center will help students and professors teach and understand complex scientific work in a new way.
"There is nothing more powerful than an image; we are visual animals," Zupan said. "Size, resolution and stereo vision really give you a unique perspective, and that is what this wall is going to bring to the scientific community at Tufts."
The sheer size of the visualization screen makes it special because it is one large screen, rather than a group of many smaller monitors that each display a portion of the larger image. Most universities with large visualization displays have such tiled monitors, which break up images along screen borders.
According to Zupan, the screen also utilizes rear projection, which means that users can "immerse themselves in the data, in the image without blocking its projection." This way, viewers can fully grasp what the projected data means in its entirety.
Another remarkable aspect of the center is the resolution projected onto the screen. Utilizing two high-quality Sony projectors, the center projects an image more than four times better than consumer high-definition TVs.
Zupan also pointed out the visualization center's use of stereo vision - two high-quality images projected onto each other that can be used to simulate a three-dimensional image. Using special glasses, users can view complex images such as huge sub-atomic molecules in a simulated 3-D environment.
According to Zupan, this allows professors and students to better understand what they are working with. "It's amazing, you want to grab it," he said of the clarity of the images projected onto the screen.
At the center's opening ceremony, a series of presentations, led by seniors Kyle Maxwell and Lauren Vasey along with professors and graduate students, highlighted the capabilities and potential of the center. Still images, as well as video, were projected to demonstrate the new technology.
For now, uses of the visualization center are still being discussed amongst faculty in engineering, math and other departments. The facility will be open to both graduate and undergraduate students, as well as visiting professors - though people close to the project are not ruling out social events like screenings of the documentary Planet Earth or a Halo tournament.
Maxwell presented research from his senior design project, which aims to develop a virtual reality surgical simulation. He found that the facility added a lot to his work.
"For doctors, it is really important to have an immersive experience when learning how to perform complex surgeries," Maxwell said. "The visualization center is unique in its ability to help someone make the most of my research because of the high resolution and large size of the image."
