White Paper | Simplifying the World of Professional Graphics

This white paper from AMD and featured on DesignWorld, is a great introduction for anyone who is in CAD / CAE, DCC, Scientific Visualization, or Medical Imaging but doesn’t really completely understand all of the buzzwords or specs-and-feed language typically espoused by the 3D graphic card vendors. It’s basically a from top to bottom explanation of how 3D graphics work, what makes up a graphics card, what OpenCL, OpenGL and DirectX do, and how to combine GPUs to do even more. It then goes on to give real examples of how various industries benefit from GPU acceleration. Finally it described some of the FirePro advantages (notably ability to handle huge datasets, Eyefinity, reliability, and support).

Barco selects ATI FirePro with Eyefinity for multi-display MRI, CT, Mammography medical imaging

Now this is a great example of Eyefinity being used for the professional markets, and not just gaming (although I often do reference CAD and digital signage!).
The new Barco MXRT display controllers driven by ATI FirePro graphic cards allow clinicians to use three displays to view multiple images and corresponding data simultaneously. They can also

Here’s a nice summary from a related blog:

“Radiology professionals working with MRI, CT and Mammography medical imaging systems need multiple displays to review patient information and their images simultaneously, or review several large scans at once. While using more than one display is not a new concept for medical imaging, the ability to drive three large, high resolution 5 or 10 megapixel displays from one professional graphics card is” (i.e. holding the cost down, and keeping the technical issues at a minimum).

AMD FirePro 2270 low-profile for financial markets and ATI FirePro V5800 DVI for medical displays

The new $149 AMD FirePro 2270 is a low-profile,  fan-less, energy efficient (15 watts max, 10 watts average), dual-display graphics card targeting financial and corporate markets. It supports OpenGL 4.1 and DX11.

The new $469 ATI FirePro V5800 is a CAD/visualization solution w/ 1GB GDDR5 memory that can drive two high-resolution 30-bit 5MP medical displays using dual link DVI.  It supports OpenGL 4.1, DX11 and OpenCL 1.1.

Barco releases graphics controller optimized for mammography & radiology 3D based on FirePro GPU

Barco has introduced a new graphics display controller, the MXRT-7300, specifically designed to speed up 3D imaging and digital mammography applications in radiology departments. It is powered by a FirePro workstation GPU with 1 GB memory. It supports 10-bit (1,024 simultaneous levels of gray and over 1 billion colors) display of up to 3,280 x 2,048 pixel images. This level of shading gradation and resolution is critical for accurate visual diagnosis using digital images,.

“With the brand-new MXRT-7300 graphics processor, our customers will enjoy an immediate performance improvement when manipulating large datasets in mammography, as well as an acceleration of OpenGL and DirectX functions increasingly common in high-end PACS (picture archiving and communication systems) environments”

TeraGrid ‘08 gallery showcases the beauty of scientific 3D visualization

The 3D Digital Visualization Gallery from the June TeraGrid ‘08 conference in Las Vegas highlights a wide variety of scientific and engineering domains in computational science. The gallery of static images and QuickTime movies showcases the “Beauty of Science” with simulations ranging from seismic activity and volume rendering to superovae and toroidal magnetic fields. All of the imagery was created from science and engineering results related to some aspect of the TeraGrid. The TeraGrid, sponsored by the National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure, provide high-performance network connections and resources to handle massive datasets in science and engineering.

Where 10-bit really matters

Although graphic cards that support 10-bit per channel per pixel have been around for a few years, there is a big difference between cards that can just display 10-bit in 2D mode and those that can load 10-bit images quickly or provide 3D acceleration and 10-bit at the same time.  A great example of where this really matters is mammography, where the slightest color variation in a digital breast scan could indicate the presence of a tumor. 10-bit precision delivers more information to the eye of the radiologist. But these dataset are large and need to load fast if they are going to be used by busy medical staff, instead of their regular hardcopy velum.