Visualisation of 3D neural network

Abstract

This research aims to look at generating 3D visualisation of neuron cells from the SWC file format. SWC is a widely used file format to store the structure and integrity of a neuron cell. However, swc file alone does not allow user to visualise the structure and integrity of the neurons as it only contains the positional and structural description of the neurons itself. Thus, the aim of this project is to create a tool that aids in the visualisation of a neron cell given its SWC file. The approach to visualisation aims in converting the SWC file to an output obj file. The use of obj file as our output format allows the file to be shared easily and displayed with a simple 3D viewer program. The current program is able to generate the neuron cells using 3D triangular mesh rendering with user able to set the resolution of the neuron file. The resolution setting is a compromise between rendering quality and its speed. A lower resolution render will be generated at a faster speed compared to a high-resolution render. Below we shall explore more of this project and its techniques used in rendering.