The new SGI systems will be used to support I-space, an immersive, interactive environment developed at Erasmus Medical Center that runs software designed to convert 2D medical images into 3D. The center is using the system for genomic and proteomic data mining, as well as for visualizing MRI scans, CT scans, and ultrasound images.
"There are eight graphics pipes in the [I-space] system -- you are actually standing inside the data -- so we required a visualization computer that is powerful enough to really do the rendering of the 3D software in a very efficient way, and only SGI had the appropriate solution," said Ronald Nanninga, founder and managing director of Crosslinks, a spin off of Erasmus Medical Center that is marketing the I-space technology, in a statement.
The prototype I-space system runs on a Silicon Graphics Prism visualization system with 8 Intel Itanium 2 processors, 8 ATI FireGL graphics processors, and 12 GB of memory. The medical center also runs a 32-processor SGI Origin(R) 3800 server.
Financial terms of the deal with SGI were not disclosed.