Data visualisation

Much of our microscopy data reveals the motion of microorganisms in three dimensions. This is challenging to view on a two-dimensional medium like the printed page or a computer screen. We are keen to communicate our results and make them more intuitive and accessible, and to this end, we have engaged artists and musicians to help us in our endeavours. In recent years, we have collaborated with Duncan Williams at the University of Salford to examine the ‘musification’ of scientific data, and ceramics artist Tristan Lathey who produced an abstract representation of Leishmania parasites for a public engagement event. On the digital side, we have been investigating new ways to view our data, using tools such as POV-Ray and Unity, both of which can produce anaglyph images that must be viewed with red/blue glasses and are suitable for lecture-style events. Both computational tools are immensely powerful ways to visualise data and our experiments with them are just beginning.