January 25, 2000

Immerse Yourself

PORTAL: GATEWAY TO NEW VISIONS, WORLDS

BY CYNTHIA LEE / UCLA Today Staff

     Numbers — trillions of them, from computations done on supercomputers — make up the huge images that loom across a 9-foot-high screen that curves for 24 feet inside the small, darkened theater.

A simulation of laser plasma interaction provides an otherworldly backdrop for computer technicians at the soon-to-open Visualization Portal.

     Strange, colorful waves pulse rhythmically through a cubic shape — a virtual model of a section of heart tissue.

     Suddenly, the waves turn erratic and out of sync. Arrhythmia. A heart is fibrillating. The waves — exact simulations of electrical activity — silently scream "Heart attack! Code blue!" And the audience, literally immersed in the giant images, feels a tinge of virtual terror.

     What these invited guests are watching is not the latest IMAX documentary, but the eye-opening work of cardiac researcher Alan Garfinkel of the departments of Medicine and Physiological Science and his team, who have simulated exactly, through mathematical modeling, a heart in fibrillation. No easy task, it took them 7 trillion calculations to simulate one second of heart activity in one small section of the heart.

     But the reason these visiting VIPs and high-powered donors from the American Heart Association were recently "wowed" by "Virtual Heart" was its presentation in a yet-to-be-opened virtual-reality theater at UCLA, called the Visualization Portal.

     "Every fuse in my brain has been blown out," extolled one excited donor to cardiac

A view of the UCLA campus taken by satellite fills much of the 24-foot spherical screen.

research, after watching the human heart in action, including a segment in which plaque forms in an artery and then breaks off before becoming lodged. Not just science-as-entertainment, the simulations have already helped researchers design a new generation of drugs to prevent fibrillation.

     "It's really pretty amazing what it can do," said Janet Lustig, deputy director of Development/Corporations and Foundations, of the portal. "You look at something and think you are in the picture. You feel like you're moving into it. This will give people the full impact of the extraordinary work that many of our faculty are doing."

     The portal, the brainstorm of the Office of Academic Computing, is currently the only facility of its kind in the West run by a university. Opening in March, it brings together many different groups on campus; a faculty advisory board, Communications Technology Services and Facilities Management worked collaboratively to create the portal. It was built, say its creators, to serve faculty from many disciplines who use visualization and multimedia in their research and teaching and to support campus efforts in grant development.

     "Visualization may have historical roots in the physical sciences, but it is equally driven by applications in entertainment, the arts, humanities and the health sciences," said Marsha Smith, acting director of OAC. 

     The facility is equipped with high-end workstations, hardware and software from Apple, SGI, CISCO and IBM and an immersive virtual-reality display provided by Trimension Systems. The effect is made possible by three three-gun overhead projectors capable of overlapping and blending images so that a single image can be displayed across the spherical screen. Or, three images can be shown simultaneously.

     To see stereographic images in true 3-D, viewers don special glasses that are cued by pointing them at overhead laser sensors that will adjust their vision to see virtual environments. While the theater has a seating capacity for 40, about 25 can actually

Margon Reveil, coordinator of the facility, and a technician operate the portal's projection system from a control room.

be "immersed" in an image, where the spherical 166-degree screen will fill their peripheral vision.

     The portal is designed to be flexible to accommodate a variety of activities in research and teaching. "Anything faculty and researchers can dream up, which takes advantage of the portal's unique capabilities, will be supported by the staff," said Margo Reveil, coordinator of the facility.

      Excited faculty from across the campus say its potential is still being explored. Research physicist Viktor Decyk is already using the portal to display simulations of laser plasma interaction based on complex calculations that will help scientists understand what happens in real-life experiments.

     "It's a communications vehicle that the campus has never had before," Decyk said. "The images are so big they hit you in the face. I'm very excited about what this will open up for us."

     Scientists say that seeing their work in this way — being able, in some cases, to "walk" through the images, explore them from different perspectives and visualize interactions — may give them new insights into mysteries that defy solution from just looking at numerical data.

     "We hope there will be surprises for us," Decyk said. "When you blow something

Colorful cubes that represent heart tissue nearly span the height of the nine-foot-tall screen. Waves of electrical activity ripple through, causing the heart to contract.

up that big and immerse yourself in it, you may see new things you haven't been able to see before."

     Faculty from the School of Theater, Film and Television are talking about the possibility of modeling a virtual stage, settings and a backdrop in front of which actors can perform.

     Professor of Classics Bernard Frischer directs the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Lab, which is making highly accurate, 3-D computer models of archaeological sites around the world. Currently, the lab is working on a model of ancient Rome.

     "The visualization portal is the ideal facility for bringing this material off the computer, out of the lab and into a facility where we can make these models available to students," said Frischer.

     Using the portal as an experimental space for artists and designers is also an exciting possibility, said Victoria Vesna, chair of the Design Department.

     "To those of us who create 3-D immersive virtual worlds, this facility is critical," Vesna said. "Not only will it allow us to experiment with a technically perfect setup, one that would be impossible for us to put together, but it will physically bring people together who work in different disciplines but have similar interests. I was really so encouraged to see how eager OAC was to get artists and designers involved in this project."

     The portal is also a gateway, said Smith, a point of entry to introduce faculty to OAC's other programs and

Cardiac researcher Alan Garfinkel points to simulations of electrical activity using "Virtual Heart," a visualization program that has already helped researchers develop new drugs to prevent fibrillation.

services in high performance computing, mass storage, high capacity networking and Internet technologies — each critical for generating complex visualizations. Next door to the facility will be OAC's visualization lab, where faculty have access to visualization experts, software and hardware.

     Lustig, who also served on the portal's advisory panel, said the facility will enable  corporate sponsors and foundation representatives to share in the excitement of discovery.

     "Previously, we'd all have to crowd around a computer screen in someone's office or lab to see anything," she said of past presentations to VIPs. "You couldn't get the full effect of faculty research that way.  Some people couldn't even see the screen.

     "The portal gives us the opportunity to showcase the extraordinary work of the faculty in the best possible way," said Lustig.

     To learn more about the portal, go to OAC's Web site at www.oac.ucla.edu.

Copyright 2000 UC Regents