Today's Visualization Research Articles

Inviwo - A Visualization System with Usage Abstraction Levels.

The complexity of today's visualization applications demands specific visualization systems tailored for the development of these applications. Frequently, such systems utilize levels of abstraction to improve the application development process, for instance by providing a data flow network editor. Unfortunately, these abstractions result in several issues, which need to be circumvented through an abstraction-centered system design. Often, a high level of abstraction hides low level details, which makes it difficult to directly access the underlying computing platform, which would be important to achieve an optimal performance. Therefore, we propose a layer structure developed for modern and sustainable visualization systems allowing developers to interact with all contained abstraction levels. We refer to this interaction capabilities as usage abstraction levels, since we target application developers with various levels of experience. We formulate the requirements for such a system, derive the desired architecture, and present how the concepts have been exemplary realized within the Inviwo visualization system. Furthermore, we address several specific challenges that arise during the realization of such a layered architecture, such as communication between different computing platforms, performance centered encapsulation, as well as layer-independent development by supporting cross layer documentation and debugging capabilities.

Event-Based Concepts for User-Driven Visualization

Visualization has become an increasingly important tool to support exploration and analysis of the large volumes of data we are facing today. However, interests and needs of users are still not being considered sufficiently. The goal of this work is to shift the user into the focus. To that end, we apply the concept of event-based visualization that combines event-based methodology and visualization technology. Previous approaches that make use of events are mostly specific to a particular application case, and hence, can not be applied otherwise. We introduce a novel general model of event-based visualization that comprises three fundamental stages. (1) Users are enabled to specify what their interests are. (2) During visualization, matches of these interests are sought in the data. (3) It is then possible to automatically adjust visual representations according to the detected matches. This way, it is possible to generate visual representations that better reflect what users need for their task at hand. The model's generality allows its application in many visualization contexts. We substantiate the general model with specific data-driven events that focus on relational data so prevalent in today's visualization scenarios. We show how the developed methods and concepts can be implemented in an interactive event-based visualization framework, which includes event-enhanced visualizations for temporal and spatio-temporal data.

Volumetric 3D displays and application infrastructure

Volumetric displays produce volume-filling three-dimensional imagery. Each volume element or voxel in a 3D scene emits visible light from the region in which it appears. Given their ability to project volume-filling autostereoscopic imagery, these displays are being adopted in fields as diverse as medical imaging, mechanical computer-aided design, and military visualization. The author uses the term autostereoscopic to describe a display property that lets observers experience a 3D effect without requiring any additional eyewear. Vendors are developing software that lowers the barrier to adoption by providing compatibility with new and legacy applications. At least one firm is developing a display-dependent visualization environment with the aim of 3D displays overall. The widespread adoption of volumetric 3D displays requires the ability to integrate tightly into today's visualization software.

Interactive visualization of a high-resolution reconstruction of the Moon

In recent years, we have witnessed accelerated developments in digital photography and spacecraft technology. current spaceborne and airborne platforms can generate several hundred high-resolution images very quickly. Although these platforms can easily produce enormous image data sets on the order of hundreds of Gbytes or several Tbytes, the interactive visualization of such large image databases is still a long and tedious process. Today's visualization systems strictly limit the number and size of images that can be displayed. Clearly, the efficient visual exploration and analysis of this type of data requires interactivity.