Visualization of complex data sets over Internet: 2D and 3D visualization of the 3D digital atlas of zebrafish development

We have designed and implemented a 3D digital atlas of zebrafish development. In this paper we focus on the presentation of the data of this atlas using the Internet. An important part of the data of this atlas is graphical. Therefore special effort is put into fast and comprehensive visualization of the 2D and 3D graphical data, i.e. images and their annotations as well as the 3D models that arise from the application of the annotation process on a coherent 3D dataset. These data are presented to the end-user and the modes of visualization need be linked to provide the user with feedback. The success of visualization over the Internet is partially depending on the transfer time of the data as well as the computational load of the data at the client side. The applications discussed in this paper are optimized for transfer time and computational load.