Interaction Visualisation of Complex Genomic Data with Game Engines

Abstract

Graphic game engines have introduced even more advanced technologies to improve the rendering, image quality, ergonomics, and user experience of their creations by providing user-friendly yet powerful tools to design and develop new games. There are thousands of genes in the human genome that contain information about specific individual patients and the biological mechanisms of their diseases. The complexity in biomedical and genomic data usually requires effective visual information processing and analytics. Unfortunately, available visualisation techniques for this domain are limited, many in static forms. The open study questions here are as follow: Are there lessons to be learnt from these video games? Or could the game technology help us explore new graphic ideas accessible to non-specialists? This paper presents a visual analytics model that enables the analysis of large and complex genomic data using Unity3D game technology. This includes an interactive visualisation, providing an overview of the patient cohort with a detailed view of the individual genes. We illustrate the effectiveness of our approach in guiding the effective treatment decision in the cohort through datasets from the childhood cancer B-Cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.