Shared Resources
Faculty and students at the Center for Visual Science have access to the administrative and technical personnel and to research facilities beyond those any single laboratory could support. Many of these resources are provided by a Core grant from the National Eye Institute (NEI). CVS administrative offices have two locations, one at Medical Center (G - 4110) and one in Meliora Hall (Meliora 274) in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering. Each location has two conference rooms where faculty and students can hold research talks, journal clubs and other events. The two locations are within easy walking distance.
Shared Research Facilities include:
- Two virtual reality (VR) labs, one in Meliora Hall and one at the Medical Center. The first VR system includes a cylindrical, 180o field-of-view display system with integrated head, eye and body tracking, with multisensory virtual workspace that provides realistic haptic and visual displays of 3D scenes with integrated eye, head and hand tracking for the study of multisensory integration and visuomotor control. The second VR lab is designed for the use with patients. It includes a VR1280 head-mounted display that immerses subjects visually in a programmed virtual environment while their head-, eye-movements and position in space are tracked. Subjects are free to physically walk and otherwise move within a large space while wearing the VR helmet and performing realistic tasks.
- Brain stimulation & EEG laboratory, located in the new CVS space in SMD. This lab includes an EEG system, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with Brainsight neuronavigation system, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), eye-tracker and two psychophysical set-ups.
- Patient Psychophysics Facility, located in the ground floor of the Flaum Eye Institute, adjacent to the Ophthalmology Eye Clinic, contains a multiple, calibrated display systems for presentation of visual stimuli, multiple eye tracking systems (both head-mounted and desk-top mounted), as well as a head-mounted virtual reality display with incorporated eye tracking capabilities.
- Imaging facilities at CVS include Histology/Microscopy
Facility which includes
confocal imaging), Adaptive Optics (AO) Imaging Facility and Functional/Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(MRI) facility located at The
Rochester Center for Brain Imaging (RCBI).
- The histology/microscopy facility, in addition to standard equipment and chemicals used for tissue processing, houses two large fluorescence microscopes (an Olympus AX70 and an Olympus BX53) equipped with motorized stages, high-resolution digital cameras, interfaced with image analysis software, and Zeiss Meta 510 spectral scanning confocal microscope.
- The AO facility consists of 5 adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscopes (AOSLO) that produce cellular-scale reflectance and fluorescence images of the living retina in a variety of species.
- Structural/functional MRI Facility possesses a Siemens Trio 3 Tesla MRI system for scanning human and animal subjects. Standard birdcage head coil, a 12-channel and a 32-channel phased array head coils as well as specially designed coils for structural and functional imaging of primate brains are also available. Scanning applications at the RCBI include functional MRI (EPI-BOLD), structural MRI, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and single- and multivoxel spectroscopy. Additional equipment includes devices for visual and auditory stimulation and an Eye Tracker. BrainSight navigational system is available to electrophysiologists, allowing co-registration of fiducial markers visible in structural MR scans with chamber placements during surgeries. Each facility, which is staffed with a full-time highly qualified technician, is available to the faculty and student members of the Center for Visual Science.
- A computing cluster for the processing of large sets of data which features 14 purpose-built computers with 52 Intel Core-i7 processors and remote access capabilities.
- Instrumentation facility at CVS provides expertise and shop facilities for optical, electronic, and mechanical engineering to design, assemble, maintain, and repair novel devices for vision research. The facility is staffed with two highly qualified technical personnel.
- Animal Facilities: CVS members have access to two vivaria, both well-equipped for the housing and care of mammals used in vision research. The facilities and programs of the Vivarium and Division of Laboratory Animal Medicine are fully accredited by the American Association of Laboratory Animal Care. The facilities are staffed by three full-time veterinarians, several animal technicians, and other specialized support personnel.
