Poster Presentation 44th Lorne Genome Conference 2023

VR-Omics: Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics Exploration in Virtual Reality (#255)

Denis Bienroth 1 , Natalie Charitakis 1 2 , Sabrina Jaeger-Honz 3 , Dimitar Garkov 3 , Karsten Klein 3 , Hieu Nim 1 4 5 , Falk Schreiber 3 , Mirana Ramialison 1 4 5
  1. Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Parkville, VIC, Australia
  2. Department of Paediatrics, Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  3. Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
  4. Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  5. System Biology Institute, Clayton, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Spatially resolved transcriptomics is an emerging class of high-throughput technologies that enable biologists to systematically investigate the expression of genes along with spatial information. Upon data acquisition, one major hurdle is the subsequent interpretation and visualization of the datasets acquired. To address this challenge, we present a novel data visualization system with interactive functionalities in virtual reality, using an embedded automated workflow for analysis and data processing. The application is designed to help biologists to analyze and interpret spatially resolved transcriptomic datasets. Supported are various technologies such as Visium and Xenium by 10X Genomics, STOmics by BGI, MERFISH by VIZGEN, or Tomo-seq. The system is implemented as a local 2D desktop application or as an immersive environment using head-mounted display virtual reality. This allows biologists to interact with the data in novel ways not previously possible, which includes visually exploring the gene expression patterns of an organ and comparing genes based on their 3D expression profiles.