The main purpose behind 3D rendering of microbial communities is to be able to interact with the data (rotating, zooming, cropping, etc...) in order to gain an understanding of your data that may not be possible through viewing 2D slices. This section describes the facilities ProkaryMetrics provides to allow you to explore your data.
The mouse is the main means of interacting with rendered image data. The few keyboard commands available will be discussed as appropriate in this section. A list of all the keyboard commands is at the end of this section with a short description of each key’s purpose.
Imagine the the rendered image data is contained within a transparent hamster ball floating in space. If you grab the hamster ball, you can rotate it in any direction and the image data will rotate along with it. In ProkaryMetrics, you can use the mouse to rotate the hamster ball. Begin by left-clicking (and holding the mouse button down) anywhere within the Visualization Window. While holding the button, move the mouse and any data in the window will rotate in the direction you are moving the mouse. The first example below shows an initial rendering of a sample image set with the cursor near one bacterium.
In the next image, the data has been rotated counter-clockwise approximately 90 degrees, and rotated away from the user (into the screen) approximately 45 degrees.
Zooming in and out can be accomplished either with the mouse wheel (up to zoom in, down to zoom out) or by right-clicking and dragging with the mouse. Dragging up zooms in, dragging down zooms out. Zooming with the mouse wheel generally results in larger magnification steps. Zooming with the right mouse button gives you smoother magnification and slightly more control over how far it zooms in and out.
This screenshot shows the original data from above, magnified.
Especially when magnifying data, in order to get the best view it is very useful to translocate the rendered data. In other words, moving the data up/down or left/right in order to center a particular section of interest within the Visualization Window. This can be accomplished with a third mouse button. Typically this button is in the middle of the mouse, and in mice with wheels, may be accessed by pressing down on the wheel itself. For mice with more than three buttons, this action is mapped to whichever button is assigned to be mouse button 3. The first image below shows the sample data set as was shown previously.
The second image shows the data after being moved over to the right. Notice that neither the orientation nor the magnification level has changed.
ProkaryMetrics creates the 3D reconstruction of the fluorescent image data using a number of default settings that are user-modifiable through a settings dialog shown below:
ProkaryMetrics allows users to load more than one set of images at a time. Each image set is rendered within the Visualization Window as if it was the only image data being rendered. So if you load two sets of image data taken from the same sample but perhaps with different fluorescent colors, the two data sets will be rendered exactly as they appeared under the microscope, i.e. intermingled.
Each image set is separate in terms of settings, but you will need to tell ProkaryMetrics which is “active”. This can be done through the View >> Select Image Layer menu item. This pops up a dialog with a list of the loaded image sets. One item can be selected at a time, and simply clicking on the item will change the currently active image set to the one selected. Then, when you choose the View >> Image Layer Settings menu item, the settings for the correct image set will be displayed.
Note that the Select Image Layer dialog does not prevent interacting with any other windows in ProkaryMetrics, so if you are frequently switching between image sets, you can keep the dialog up at all times.
In order to perform measurements and analysis, ProkaryMetrics currently requires users to mark the visible bacteria within the loaded image data. In the future, we hope to partially automate the process.
The process of recording bacteria begins by marking the rendered image data with end and middle points. Currently ProkaryMetrics expects a bacillus-like morphology for the bacteria and supports three separate forms: coccoid, bacillus, and filament. Functionally, these correspond to one, two, and three or more marker(s) that are required to record each morphological type.
To begin (after loading some image data), make sure the Visualization Window has the focus by clicking once anywhere within it. Notice that the third status bar section indicates that you are currently in Exploring Mode. This means that the mouse will be used to manipulate the view of the data as was discussed previously. If you now press the ‘x’ key, the status bar display will change to indicate you are now in Recording Mode. In this mode, the mouse is used to place and remove the markers that will be used to record the position of bacteria.
Note again, that the mouse cursor is displayed within the Visualization Window as two opposing cones that attach to the nearest surface and follow the contours in the data. This allows you to click directly on the image data, and place a marker exactly on the surface of bacteria.
In the image below, we are in Recording Mode, and the cursor is positioned at one end of a bacterium, ready to place a marker.
In this next image, a single marker has been placed at the surface of the image data by clicking once. You will notice that the marker is a small sphere with a default color of orange. Both the marker radius and color can be changed with a settings dialog that will be described later. Finally, the cursor has been moved over to the other end of the bacterium in preparation to place the second marker.
Here we have placed the second marker at the other end of the bacterium, and since this is a bacillus, requiring two markers, we are ready to record the markers as representing a single bacterium.
Once you have placed the appropriate markers, move the mouse down to the Actions Panel beneath the Visualization Window, and click on the Record Bacterium button. This removes the markers you just placed, and replaces them with a rendering of a single bacterium with the endpoints in the locations you marked.
Note that when you click on the record button, the focus is taken away from the Visualization Window, and the keyboard shortcuts will no longer work until the Visualzation Window has focus again. So if you think you will need to rotate the rendered data before placing more markers it is good practice to toggle back to the Exploring Mode (x key) before clicking on the Record button. If the rendered data is in good position to continue placing markers, go ahead and leave it in Recording Mode.
In this final image, we have recorded a second bacterium.
Note that (except perhaps for very small communities) it is not necessary to record every single bacterium within the sample in order to gather enough data for analysis. In fact, understanding how much of the community is necessary is an ongoing area of research.
To delete a placed marker, simply move to cursor on or very near it, and right-click with the mouse.
To delete the most recently recorded bacterium, click the Undo button in the Actions Panel. If you continue to click the Undo button, it will remove recorded bacteria in reverse order in which they were added.
To delete any specific bacterium, move the mouse cursor on or very near it and press the D key.
Selecting the View >> Bacteria Layer Settings menu item will show the following dialog:
To export an image of the current state of the Visualization Window, click on the Tools >> Take Screenshot menu option. ProkaryMetrics supports saving screenshots as PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PNM, PostScript, or BMP.