IDL in Pharmaceutical Research at Hoffmann-La Roche

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IDL is used in pharmaceutical research at the Magnetic Resonance (MR) laboratory at Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland. MR imaging is employed for non-invasive measurement of physiological parameters such as perfusion in living tissue.

MR angiography is part of our research projects to visualize the vessel tree in the brain of rats. This can provide essential information in diseases such as stroke or atherosclerosis. A 3D MR dataset is acquired showing the arteries with high signal intensity. A segmentation tool has been developed in IDL for the segmentation and the 3D visualization of the vessel tree. This 3D visualization enables a clear assessment of the course of the vessels.

One of the major requirements for software tools in our research environment is the speed and ease for developing complex data analysis programs. IDL's GUI builder helps us a lot to assemble GUIs quickly by its visual drag-and-drop paradigm. This allows us to concentrate on the development of new algorithms. This work is also supported a lot by IDL's program library and the development environment and its integrated interactive tools.