THE PROBLEM
Designing effective new drugs is a difficult, complicated and expensive task. Identifying compounds that are active against various diseases and then understanding their mechanism of activity and how they cure diseases are enormous undertakings that requires years of research. Because of the incredible complexity and delicate internal chemical balances in the body, it takes trained experts and intense, careful study to ensure the safety of these medicines.

Over the last decade a powerful imaging technique called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as an important medical diagnostic tool, especially for tissues that are otherwise impossible to study, such as those deep within the brain. MRI exploits the fact that different tissues behave differently in strong magnetic fields. With computerized imaging technology, researchers can observe this behavior in the body's tissues under different conditions, without surgery or lengthy hospital stays.

Dr. Ron Behling, a researcher at Bristol-Myers Squibb's Pharmaceutical Research Institute in New Jersey, is using Visual Numerics' PV-WAVE visual data analysis software and MRI to study problems in drug discovery and design. Dr. Behling uses MRI to measure the effects of drug activity and to understand how drugs work within the body.

One disadvantage of MRI is that a large amount of data is created. One experiment can easily produce more than four gigabytes of data, and there are often multiple experiments in a study. To interpret these images, Dr. Behling needs powerful analysis and imaging techniques that can handle this volume of data and still remain interactive.

THE SOLUTION
In Dr. Behling's work, MRI data are sent to his Silicon Graphics® workstation where they are read into PV-WAVE. According to Dr. Behling, "Although there are no standard data formats in MRI, it is trivial for me to read my data into PV-WAVE since the command language has the flexibility to read virtually any data." In a few commands, the image is quickly displayed. A fast visual inspection determines if the data are suitable for further study.

In further analysis, Dr. Behling uses many of PV-WAVE's graphics and analysis features. For example, color tables are interactively manipulated to bring out hidden details in the images. Regions of interest are selected for more detailed statistical analysis. Using various PV-WAVE analysis functions, like FFTs and curve fits, custom procedures are developed to assess diffusion rate constants in the tissues. Contour plots provide a closer look at relative scales and intensities in the images. And finally, binary files and hard-copy output to TIFF and Postscript formats help to share findings with colleagues and professional publications.

Flexibility is important in Dr. Behling's work because an analysis or visualization technique appropriate for one type of data may be completely unsuitable for another. PV-WAVE, with its highly interactive command-based interface and its powerful macro capability, provides the flexibility to easily modify existing analysis methods and add new algorithms. This is absolutely vital for successful data analysis. Reports Dr. Behling, "While many packages provide imaging capability, the flexibility to analyze the images in any way is a special strength of PV-WAVE. I process the data as I wish, visualize them quickly, search for interesting regions, analyze those regions and do further analysis based on those results. Because of the ease of visualization and analysis, I can analyze data quickly and do analyses that would otherwise be quite difficult to perform."

RETURN ON INVESTMENT
With MRI and PV-WAVE, Dr. Behling and his colleagues have the tools they need to study the behavior of drugs and thereby design medicines that are safer and more effective for future patients.

WORLD CLASS PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND SUPPORT
Visual Numerics has provided technical software solutions for numerical analysis and visualization for over 30 years. The company's software products help users understand complex data from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications. Visual Numerics offers two product lines: the IMSL® Numerical Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and the PV-WAVE® visual data analysis development environment. Visual Numerics also offers customized consulting services for applications that involve mathematical, statistical, or visual data analysis to meet today’s business analytical needs.