Matter VRX

As a follow up to the Brainroads project, Matter VRX (Matter Virtual Reality Experience) is a project conducted in association with the German hospital Charité, aiming for a virtual reality visualization of MRI data. My work in the project was done as an internship, with a fellow student at Télécom SudParis. We both worked on creating the first prototypes, using Unity and Steam VR. Our goal was to display voxels taken directly from MRI analysis tools such as MRTrix3 in VR, add the ability to navigate through these voxels, and add a few data manipulation and display functions. Some of these functions were the ability to select certain voxels, add annotations based on voice dictation, or create a CSS-like system to apply certain styles to certain voxels.

We worked on the basis of data provided to us by one of the researcher in the hospital, so that we could focus from the start on parsing and displaying this data. Because of the size of the data (around 12 billions voxels), classic object oriented programming was not an option, so we turned to a former Unity feature that seemed promising : the Entity Component System. Being a data-oriented design pattern, it allowed us to display much more voxels at a given time, even though 12 billions was still way too much for an above average computer.

While working on the prototype, we also had regular meeting with the German team, along with a teacher at Télécom SudParis and a french design teacher. We thus had some helping feedback from time to time, both on the technical side and on the UI and UX side. However, in order for these meetings to be optimal, and because one of the use cases required it, we had to find ways to broadcast the VR view for people not directly using the application.

My work

• Unity 3D
• Unity Entity Component System
• Virtual Reality Programming
• VR UI & UX
• C#