3D Visualization Framework Research Articles

Data-driven visual model development and 3D visual analytics framework for underground mining

Data visualisation is broadly utilised to aid in presenting complex information, facilitating decision-making, and enhancing operational efficiency in the mining sector. However, due to the extensive utilisation of CAD files and the complexity and difficulty of converting 2D drawings into 3D models, it is challenging to realise (near) real-time 3D data visualisation in mining applications. The difficulties are including site drawing complexity, lack of standardisation, time-consuming cleaning, and imperative manual intervention. This paper addresses these challenges by focusing on an automatic, data-driven approach for 3D visual model development in mining, with an emphasis on lifetime support and sustainability. Therefore, we introduce standardised visual model data diagram and proposed conversion workflows to leverage digitised 2D drawings in automatic 3D visual model development. Moreover, to improve visualisation efficiency and facilitate visual analytics construction in mining, this paper also proposes a 3D tile index methodology for efficient visual model reconstruction and generic production data integration. To ensure lifetime support and sustainable development in visualisation, we propose two model expansion schemes: one based on dxf file-driven model development, and the other one is interaction-oriented 3D model design and development, which the two schemes share the same data exchange and conversion workflows. Furthermore, to facilitate data fusion among various datasets, we also provide insights into revealing spatial–temporal patterns among multimodality data by real-time visualisation. These advancements aim to propel the field of underground mining visualisation, offering significant insights into enhancing the efficiency and safety of mining operations.

Revisiting 3D visual grounding with Context-aware Feature Aggregation

3D visual grounding is the task of accurately locating objects in a three-dimensional scene based on textual descriptions. Current approaches mainly depend on downsampling and extracting the point features for fusion with text features. However, the main challenges of these methods are the poor point feature resolution and limited local context during multi-modal fusion, causing visual-linguistic misalignment, particularly for small objects described in the text. The intuitive solution is to get additional object-related point features, gathering more contextual information to augment the representation capability of multimodal features, thereby promoting the representation capabilities of multimodal features. Based on this, we introduce a novel 3D visual grounding framework named Context-aware Feature Aggregation (CFA). The CFA framework includes two key modules: (1) Point Augmented Aggregation Module (PAM), designed to compensate for downsampling-induced information loss by augmenting sampled points with neighboring context for more discriminative features; and (2) Dual Contextual Grouping Attention Module (DCGAM), which iteratively refines features and geometry coordinates from PAM, capturing more global context. We assess the performance of our CFA framework on two point-based datasets: ScanRefer and Nr3D/Sr3D. The CFA framework exhibits efficiency in 3D visual grounding, surpassing the performance of previous methods by experimental results.

A knowledge-guided visualization framework of disaster scenes for helping the public cognize risk information

As an important application of virtual geographic environments (VGEs), virtual disaster scenes are essential in enhancing the public’s risk awareness. However, existing virtual disaster scene visualization methods lack expert guidance and fail to meet the public’s requirements, resulting in an ineffective public understanding. Therefore, this paper proposes a knowledge-guided disaster scene 3D visualization framework. First, the public’s demand for disaster scene visualization is analyzed, and a geographic knowledge graph of disaster scenes is constructed. Second, through the guidance of the knowledge graph, the virtual disaster scenes are fusion modeled and suitability represented. Third, a diverse organization and adaptive scheduling method of disaster scene data for multi-computing devices is established. Finally, we developed a prototype system for disaster scene visualization, selected a typical disaster, and conducted cognitive experiments with eye-tracking technology. The results show that the proposed method can effectively support the adaptive visualization of virtual disaster scenes for four computing devices and maintain an efficient frame rate. In addition, compared with other disaster scene visualization methods, our framework incorporates semantic knowledge of scene, user, demand, and space. It can effectively convey disaster information and help the public cognize disaster risks and has significant advantages in modeling standardization, personalization, and adaptability.

WebTDat: A Web-Based, Real-Time, 3D Visualization Framework for Mesoscopic Whole-Brain Images.

The popularity of mesoscopic whole-brain imaging techniques has increased dramatically, but these techniques generate teravoxel-sized volumetric image data. Visualizing or interacting with these massive data is both necessary and essential in the bioimage analysis pipeline; however, due to their size, researchers have difficulty using typical computers to process them. The existing solutions do not consider applying web visualization and three-dimensional (3D) volume rendering methods simultaneously to reduce the number of data copy operations and provide a better way to visualize 3D structures in bioimage data. Here, we propose webTDat, an open-source, web-based, real-time 3D visualization framework for mesoscopic-scale whole-brain imaging datasets. webTDat uses an advanced rendering visualization method designed with an innovative data storage format and parallel rendering algorithms. webTDat loads the primary information in the image first and then decides whether it needs to load the secondary information in the image. By performing validation on TB-scale whole-brain datasets, webTDat achieves real-time performance during web visualization. The webTDat framework also provides a rich interface for annotation, making it a useful tool for visualizing mesoscopic whole-brain imaging data.

A Framework for Interactive Online 3D Visualization of Electric Information

To manage the electric network effectively, 3D visualization framework is necessary to reveal the complexity of power grid system. In this paper, an interactive online 3D visualization framework is proposed to visualize the electric network related information from power station to the static data of the system. We applied Cesium, an open source platform for 3D visualization based on WebGL supported browsers. Meanwhile, multiple Level of Detail (LoD) structure of power grid facility is generated to improve the speed of 3D model loading and rendering. The experimental results indicate that the proposed framework can integrate and dynamic visualize power grid information from multiple sources. The multiple LoD structure can reduce the model loading time by 76% and increase the FPS over 50% according to the tests on sample data.

Web-based 3D visualization framework for time-varying and large-volume oceanic forecasting data using open-source technologies

There are limitations to traditional visualization solutions regarding real-time 3D visualization of time-varying and large-volume 3D gridded oceanographic data in a web environment. We adopted the open-source visualization technologies to implement a browser-based 3D visualization framework. The developed 3D visualization interfaces provide users 3DGIS experiences on a virtual globe and simultaneously provide efficient 3D volume rendering and enriched interactive volume analysis. Our experiments suggest that the well-designed Cesium and Plotly.js API allow researchers to easily establish 3D visualization applications while avoiding the requirements of intensive programming and computations. The case study conducted shows that the proposed methods is a feasible alternative web-based 3D visualization solution, which provides a faster rendering speed, high visual effects and on-the-fly 3D visualization of oceanographic data. Due to its open-source architecture and the simplicity of the adopted technologies, the visualization framework can be easily customized to visualize other scientific data with few modifications.

3D-TTA: A Software Tool for Analyzing 3D Temporal Thermal Models of Buildings

Many software packages are designed to process 3D geometric data, although very few are designed to deal with 3D thermal models of buildings over time. The software 3D Temporal Thermal Analysis (3D-TTA) has been created in order to visualize, explore and analyze these 3D thermal models. 3D-TTA is composed of three modules. In the first module, the temperature of any part of the building can be explored in a 3D visual framework. The user can also conduct separate analyses of structural elements, such as walls, ceilings and floors. The second module evaluates the thermal evolution of the building over time. A multi-temporal 3D thermal model, composed of a set of thermal models taken at different times, is handled here. The third module incorporates several assessment tools, such as the identification of representative thermal regions on structural elements and the comparison between real and simulated (i.e., obtained from energy simulation tools) thermal models. The potential scope of this software and its applications within the field of energy efficiency are presented in various case studies at the end of the paper.

Dynamic Online 3D Visualization Framework for Real-Time Energy Simulation Based on 3D Tiles

Energy co-simulation can be used to analyze the dynamic energy consumption of a building or a region, which is essential for decision making in the planning and management of smart cities. To increase the accessibility of energy simulation results, a dynamic online 3D city model visualization framework based on 3D Tiles is proposed in this paper. Two types of styling methods are studied, attribute-based and ID map-based. We first perform the energy co-simulation and save the results in CityGML format with EnergyADE. Then the 3D geometry data of these city objects are combined with its simulation results as attributes or just with object ID information to generate Batched 3D Models (B3DM) in 3D Tiles. Next, styling strategies are pre-defined and can be selected by end-users to show different scenarios. Finally, during the visualization process, dynamic interactions and data sources are integrated into the styling generation to support real-time visualization. This framework is implemented with Cesium. Compared with existing dynamic online 3D visualization framework such as directly styling or Cesium Language (CZML), a JSON format for describing a time-dynamic graphical scene, primarily for display in a web browser running Cesium, the proposed framework is more flexible and has higher performance in both data transmission and rendering which is essential for real-time GIS applications.

Single-stage bone resection and cranioplastic reconstruction: comparison of a novel software-derived PEEK workflow with the standard reconstructive method

The combined resection of skull-infiltrating tumours and immediate cranioplastic reconstruction predominantly relies on freehand-moulded solutions. Techniques that enable this procedure to be performed easily in routine clinical practice would be useful. A cadaveric study was developed in which a new software tool was used to perform single-stage reconstructions with prefabricated implants after the resection of skull-infiltrating pathologies. A novel 3D visualization and interaction framework was developed to create 10 virtual craniotomies in five cadaveric specimens. Polyether ether ketone (PEEK) implants were manufactured according to the bone defects. The image-guided craniotomy was reconstructed with PEEK and compared to polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). Navigational accuracy and surgical precision were assessed. The PEEK workflow resulted in up to 10-fold shorter reconstruction times than the standard technique. Surgical precision was reflected by the mean 1.1±0.29mm distance between the virtual and real craniotomy, with submillimetre precision in 50%. Assessment of the global offset between virtual and actual craniotomy revealed an average shift of 4.5±3.6mm. The results validated the ‘elective single-stage cranioplasty’ technique as a state-of-the-art virtual planning method and surgical workflow. This patient-tailored workflow could significantly reduce surgical times compared to the traditional, intraoperative acrylic moulding method and may be an option for the reconstruction of bone defects in the craniofacial region.

A Fast 3D Brain Extraction and Visualization Framework Using Active Contour and Modern OpenGL Pipelines

Brain extraction is a process of removing non-brain tissue in the brain magnetic resonance (MR) images and serves as a first step towards more delicate brain segmentation. Although many brain extraction methods have been proposed in the literature, most of them are either laborious or time consuming, and lack of instant visualization. This leads to a time lag between image acquisition and comprehensive visualization. Especially for intraoperative image based neurosurgery navigation, the time lag from image acquisition to brain visualization should be reduced as much as possible. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end fast brain extraction and visualization framework. The input is a T1-weighted MR volume and the output is comprehensive brain visualization. An improved brain extraction tool (BET) algorithm is proposed to evolve a 3D active mesh model to fit the brain surface in the 3D image. Then the brain mask is generated per slice using a polygon fill algorithm. At last, a ray-casting volume rendering algorithm is used to visualize the brain surface with the help of the generated mask. All the operations are performed using the modern OpenGL pipelines running on a graphics processing unit (GPU). Experiments were performed on two publicly available datasets and one clinical dataset to compare our method with five state-of-the-art methods including the original BET in terms of segmentation accuracy and time cost. Our method achieved mean Dice coefficients of 96.8%, 97.1%, 98.5% and mean time cost of 361 ms, 341 ms, 502 ms on the three datasets, outperforming all the other methods.

Cluster rendering on large high-resolution multi-displays using X3DOM and HTML

In this paper, we propose a platform-independent visualization method that uses HTML and X3DOM for large high-resolution displays. HTML is a platform-independent language used for developing web pages, and X3DOM is a Web 3D visualization framework based on X3D; X3D is a royalty-free ISO standard XML-based file format for representing a 3D scene graph. Large high-resolution displays are used in scientific visualization, immersive virtual reality environment, and collaborative designing to efficiently deliver a large amounts of information. We introduce a run-time cluster configuration method using the component technologies of HTML5 and a data distribution strategy for a cluster rendering system based on the X3DOM framework. The comparative performance analysis and visualization results in diverse large high-resolution displays and mobile devices using widespread web browsers are also introduced. Our approach provides a cluster rendering method that can be easily and readily applied for existing large high-resolution systems, involving various platforms, by enabling novel system architecture.

A 3D visualization framework to social network monitoring and analysis

Since the rise of the Internet, the volume of metrics (indicators) used to measure current conditions of the service has been increasing exponentially. One of the challenges is to transform this amount data into legible information through visualization techniques. Visualization and monitoring indicators design is an actual and relevant challenge to provide intuitive, clear and direct understanding of large datasets. The solutions to the problem points to complex Graphical User Interface (GUI) that demands high cognitive efforts to handle it. This paper aims to present and evaluate the design process of a 3D visualization framework conceived to be easy to understand. We adopted user-centered design process to develop the concept model and usability concept to evaluate it. The usability evaluation was conducted using a Telehealth indicators dataset. Data were collected through observation technique and with the help of usability questionnaires. Data analysis was based on quantitative and qualitative approaches. The results describe the major advantages and limitations of the 3D visualization framework. We observed an overall good usability level. Meanwhile, users reported a total of 18 usability problems and proposed 35 suggestions to improve the user experience. They demonstrated strong motivation and interest in using the prototype. The usability problems of the visualization interface guided new improvements.

Interactive projection images generation for swept-based 3D display

Unifying different types of graphics file formats is one basic requirement for widespread adoption of volumetric 3D displays. In this paper a 3D data visualization and processing framework is presented which is capable of interfacing with legacy 3D software packages and providing compatibility to a wide range of true 3D display applications. Exploiting OpenGL technologies and the performance of graphics processing units, the proposal allows the user to visualize true 3D volume from different types of graphic file formats. The method can process constructed 3D models of different formats and decompose the models into a series of image slices with different thickness, angle of rotations and rotating axis in real-time to meet the projection requirements of the swept-volume display. Boolean operations and local view redrawing methods are employed to review the shape of the interior parts of the 3D objects, which can provide users with a better understanding of the complexity and spatial relationship inside the objects. The user can browse and interact with volumetric images in an intuitive manner. Approaches are also proposed to export the image slices that can be projected onto the rotating flat screen in sequence to appear in the volumetric 3D display. Two different kinds of image files are generated, and the results show that a vector image has better quality than a bitmap image in terms of file size and time-consumption. Finally, by developing a simulation platform, the procedure of forming geometric slices into a 3D spatial image can be realized to simulate the presentation effect of a volumetric 3D display.

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A FRAMEWORK BASED ON OGC WEB SERVICES FOR THE VISUALIZATION OF THREE DIMENSIONAL LARGE-SCALE GEOSPATIAL DATA OVER THE WEB

Abstract. This paper illustrates the key concepts behind the design and the development of a framework, based on OGC services, capable to visualize 3D large scale geospatial data streamed over the web. WebGISes are traditionally bounded to a bi-dimensional simplified representation of the reality and though they are successfully addressing the lack of flexibility and simplicity of traditional desktop clients, a lot of effort is still needed to reach desktop GIS features, like 3D visualization. The motivations behind this work lay in the widespread availability of OGC Web Services inside government organizations and in the technology support to HTML 5 and WebGL standard of the web browsers. This delivers an improved user experience, similar to desktop applications, therefore allowing to augment traditional WebGIS features with a 3D visualization framework. This work could be seen as an extension of the Cityvu project, started in 2008 with the aim of a plug-in free OGC CityGML viewer. The resulting framework has also been integrated in existing 3DGIS software products and will be made available in the next months.

Research on 3D Visualization Framework via CEGUI in OGRE Engine

By using high-performance graphics rendering engine, Graphical User Interface (GUI) technology is introduced for the interactive mechanism to develop the visualization system. GUI provides users with an intuitive interaction interface and plays an important role in 3D visualization. 3D visualization development gradually demands lightweight GUI framework with suitability, flexibility and extensibility. This paper presents a lightweight 3D visualization framework via Crazy Eddie's Graphical User Interface (CEGUI) in OGRE engine, and illustrates its detailed architecture and component. Finally the animations with CEGUI and OGRE are implemented.

A Real-Time 3D Visualization Framework for Multimedia Data Management, Simulation, and Prediction

Geographic Information Systems (GISs), which map spatiotemporal event data on geographical maps, have proven to be useful in many applications. Time-based Geographic Information Systems (GISs) allow practitioners to visualize collected data in an intuitive way. However, while current GIS systems have proven to be useful in post hoc analysis and provide simple two-dimensional geographic visualizations, their design typically lacks the features necessary for highly targeted real-time surveillance with the goal of spread prevention. This paper outlines the design, implementation, and usage of a 3D framework for real-time geospatial temporal visualization. In this case study, using livestock movements, the authors show that the framework is capable of tracking and simulating the spread of epidemic diseases. Although the application discussed in this paper relates to livestock disease, the proposed framework can be used to manage and visualize other types of high-dimensional multimedia data as well.

A virtual globe-based 3D visualization and interactive framework for public participation in urban planning processes

Public participation is very important for the success of an urban planning project, since any urban planning project will ultimately become part of the everyday life of the public. Most members of the general public are not urban planning professionals; therefore, well-designed visualization and interactive tools can help expand their participation in urban planning processes. The emerging technology of virtual globe-based 3D visualization is a unique opportunity to facilitate public participation in urban planning projects by promoting intuitive 3D interaction, instant interoperability and seamless integration of 3D visualization with other traditional text and multimedia information channels. This paper discusses the technical issues of developing a virtual globe-based 3D visualization framework for publicizing urban planning information, using Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to support visual planning model sharing and interoperability. With 3D photorealistic visualization, end users can conveniently obtain both the macro-vision of a project on the global scale and the micro-details on the street scale, using swift zooming tools like Google Earth. End users can select any available urban planning solution for visual investigation and comparison in a virtual globe-based 3D visualization environment. The service oriented architecture allows urban planning information to be deployed as a service in one server or several geographically distributed servers, or even from the end user’s own computer. With the architecture’s capability for integrating distributed resources, other traditional interactive functions such as labeling, BBS, forum, and email, can also be conveniently integrated into the system. Auxiliary spatial analysis tools are integrated to help end users perform “professional” tasks such as sunlight analysis and 3D distance measurement. This highly distributed system is designed for the Internet; therefore, any personal computer connected to the Internet can easily access the system and participate in the interaction.

A multi-fidelity software framework for interactive modeling of advective and diffusive contaminant transport in groundwater

Groundwater currently accounts for over 20% of the daily water usage in the United States. As the contamination of groundwater reserves also continues to increase from a variety of pollutants, remediation becomes necessary. Whether the remediation method involves containing or cleaning, a fundamental understanding of the groundwater flow patterns is necessary. This can now be gained through predictive models due to advances in groundwater simulation research. One such method, the Superblock Analytical Element Method (AEM) is capable of capturing both large-scale trends and small-scale variations in complex, heterogeneous flow fields. These trends and variations are not captured by current numerical solutions, typified by finite difference and finite element formulations. The Superblock AEM, as with many groundwater solvers, has a substantial number of input parameters and produces large amounts of 3D output. Thus, an intuitive, 3D visual framework would greatly enhance the usability of the method. With the Superblock AEM as a core solver, Groundwater TRANsport 3D (GTRAN3D) has been developed to provide a platform for modeling and viewing advective and diffusive contaminant spreading over non-intersecting spheroidal in-homogeneities in groundwater. The developed system allows a user to create an input scenario through an interactive three-dimensional graphical user interface (GUI), send that input to the solver, and then view the results on systems ranging from desktop computers to immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environments. In addition, the software can be used on any operating system or even accessed via a web interface. The development of the software framework is discussed along with the presentation of several test cases.