Corvo

Corvo is a free and open-source tool that takes the visualization and analysis of CZI CellxGene single-cell datasets to 3D Virtual Reality. Similar to CellxGene, Corvo takes a no-code approach for the end user, but also offers multimodal user input to facilitate fast navigation and analysis, and is interoperable with the existing Python data science ecosystem

Examples of Corvo’s VR interface: A: menu (1), press- to-talk voice interface, with genes recognized from voice input listed (2), list of precomputed genes (3) B: UMAP plot with gene expression scale (1) C: interaction / selection sphere D: annotation key.

You can launch Corvo by either running corvolauncher/gui/qt_main_window.py, or by launching the accompanying app that is installed when you run setup.py.

Corvo is currently on arXiv. Please cite this preprint in case you are using Corvo.

Requirements

• A SteamVR-supported VR headset (e.g. Oculus Quest 2, HTC Vive) - Corvo not work without a VR headset at the moment.
• A computer equipped with a Geforce GTX 1050-class GPU at minimum, and 8 GB RAM.

Installation

The following instructions use Anaconda, but you are welcome to use an alternative, like miniconda or mamba.

• Clone repository, recursive cloning here is important, as this will also clone the corvo-core submodule.

  git clone --recursive https://github.com/scenerygraphics/corvo

• Import the provided environment.yml file for conda. This will install the required dependencies and create a new environment named corvo.

  conda env create -f environment.yml
  conda activate corvo

• Run the provided setup script. This will compile corvo-core, and use setuptools to install corvo.

  ./build.sh
  

• Finally, you can run Corvo, by issueing corvo on the command line. Enjoy 👍