Tiled parallel coordinates for the visualization of time-varying multichannel EEG data

Abstract

The field of visualization assists data interpretation in many areas, but some types of data are not manageable by existing visualization techniques. This holds in particular for time-varying multichannel EEG data. No existing technique can simultaneously visualize information from all channels in use and all time steps. To address this problem, a new visualization technique is presented, based on the parallel coordinate method and making use of a tiled organization. This tiled organization employs a two-dimensional row-column representation, rather than a one-dimensional arrangement in columns as used for the classical parallel coordinates. The usefulness of the new method, referred to as tiled parallel coordinates, is demonstrated by one particular type of EEG data. It can be applied to an arbitrary number of time steps, for the maximum number of channels currently in use. The general setup of the method makes it widely applicable to other time-varying multivariate data types.