Visual Decision Research Articles

Towards a research agenda for visual informatics

Abstract“Visual Informatics” currently refers to visualization of and interaction with very large data sets, including both text and numeric data, chemical and molecular structures, and genome sequences. As such, it follows the widespread definition of “informatics” as being “the study of the application of computer and statistical techniques to the management of information,” or, more popularly, “computer science + X.” Commercially available visual informatics software, (such as Logical Images' VisualDx) provides real‐time visual decision support for such things as diagnosis of disease. This panel suggests reorienting the concept of informatics towards the human processes that are facilitated by technology. Along these lines, it proposes a broader definition and refocusing of the concept of visual informatics and explores the expansion of the range of research which visual informatics can address. It also looks beyond visual informatics to the larger concept of “media informatics” where information and communication technologies expand to include multiple modalities of interaction within systems, organizations, and cultures.In keeping with the conference theme of synergies between research and practice, this panel will explore a research agenda grounded through the optics of both current “real world” applications being developed in research and industry and theoretical approaches which can enfold these projects within rich conceptual frameworks.The panel format will consist of a brief introduction to the topic by the moderator, followed by several presentations exploring these issues, followed by a summation and discussion. A unique aspect of this panel is that the dialogue among the presenters and their audience will begin well before the conference, through the mechanism of the ASIS&T SIGVIS weblog (http://informationvisualization.typepad.com). We encourage participants to review the weblog and add their comments to the entries.

Decision Making by Low‐Literacy Consumers in the Presence of Point‐of‐Purchase Information

Low‐literacy consumers face disadvantages when making product choices. This article presents the results of two studies designed to explore differences in decision‐making behavior across consumer literacy levels, focusing on consumers’ ability to evaluate information in print ads and product packaging. The authors demonstrate that the presence of a visual decision aid at the point of purchase can improve choice for low‐literacy consumers.

An interactive augmented reality 3D visualization system for destroying liver tumor using cryoablation

Cryoablation is one of many local destruction techniques used to remove liver tumors. The procedure is cumbersome and time-consuming if there is no real-time access to intra-operative images as well as navigation information of instruments. In this paper, we propose a software-based solution that addresses issues like interactive, real-time navigation and visualization of cryoprobes, segmented tumor, intra-operative MR images, temperature maps, and isotherm surfaces. The system has an intuitive graphical user interface that provides access to a variety of functionalities. It enables the surgeon to perform the procedure safely, accurately, and rapidly by providing visual decision support mechanism.

Classification of observer-groups with cluster analysis and the criteria of visual decision for each group

It is important that the evaluation of X-ray images include the observer's visual characteristics. However, evaluations of X-ray images that include these characteristics are not performed because of the difficulty of quantitatively elucidating visual characteristics. In this study, we classified observers into groups (clusters) by the same criteria of visual decision, using cluster analysis (unweighted Pair-Group method using arithmetic averages), and evaluated X-ray images on the basis of this separation. Clinical application is also discussed. It was found that observer clustering caused a decrease in between-observer variation. Observers were grouped into two different categories: one with the characteristics of radiologists and the other with the characteristics of medical physicists. Our results indicated that the group with the characteristics of radiologists was suitable for the quality control (QC) of X-ray images.

History against the grain?: On the relationship between visual aesthetics and historical interpretation in the contemporary Spanish graphic novel

In this essay the traditional historiographical distinctions between events and representations, texts and images, and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ images are interrogated through a reading of the contemporary Spanish graphic novel. The focus is on the material form of the images in the historical BD Lope de Aguirre. This trilogy has one writer Fernandez-Cava and three different artists for each part of the trilogy: Enrique Breccia, Federico del Barrio, and Ricard Castells. An analysis of formal BD structures, artistic and visual decisions, is applied to the trilogy. One finds that visual form proves more important than the narrative content for the post-colonial politics of the texts.

An Interactive Decision Support System For The Design Of Rapid Public Transit Networks

This article describes a visual interactive decision support system for the simultaneous location of several rapid transit lines in a city. Three types of tool are available to the user: parameter setting, menu choices, and mouse operations. The system produces network configurations of the type selected by the user and computes a number of effectiveness measures. The system has been tested on real data from the city of Milan, Italy. It can consistently produce several interesting alternative solutions within short computing times.

AN OVERPRESSURE CASE HISTORY USING A NOVEL RISK ANALYSIS PROCESS

The economic consequence of exploitation in areas with an unspecified risk of abnormal pressure profiles range from increased drilling costs to unrealised prospect potential. Optimised planning practices will impact on not only the costs of drilling but also on the quality of the reservoir evaluation and productivity assessment.Numerous exploratory wells in the Carnarvon Basin have encountered unprognosed high pore pressures in the past, resulting in increased concerns about well control and safety, and as a consequence higher drilling costs. High pressures encountered at Parker–1ST1, Forrest–1AST1, Venture–1ST1, and Venture–2ST1, in particular, caused a high level of concern for moderately deep drilling targets. As a result of the diversity of potential overpressure mechanisms, there is a variety of opinion on the risk of encountering abnormal pressure in particular areas, and no standard way to capture and incorporate this information into planning and drilling decisions.At the end of 1999 a project was defined to evaluate the risk of overpressure of a prospect in this area. This project had the primary focus of evaluating the risk of encountering high pore pressures when drilling an exploratory well. This risk assessment was directed towards a decision point for well design, which had cost implications in anticipation of drillingIn the process of technical assessment of abnormal pressure in this prospect, it was important to include all of the necessary data and technical practices, which could contribute to an understanding of the prediction. The application of a cooperative multi-functional team and a software infrastructure (Juniper) was instrumental in allowing this process to take place. A visual decision tree with risk assessment allowed for input from all contributors and for the inter-relationship of the inputs. This comprised the methodology for assessment.The methodology highlighted, explicitly, areas of high uncertainty where evidence neither for nor against overpressure was available. These areas became the focus of technical work, as they had potential for significant impact on the risk assessment. A sub-team extensively reviewed the pressure tests, sonic logs, borehole influxes and mud weights of nearby wells. The results of the well study had a bearing on the choice of analogue, the geological model, and pressure prediction. A geological modelling sub-process was carried out to test the significance of compaction disequilibrium, organic maturation and permeability on overpressure generation. A geophysical sub-process was initiated to complement the pressure modelling risk element. Surface seismic data was depth processed to relate velocities to trends obtained from the well study.The methodology was found to be a highly effective technique for recording the decision processes and as a tool for interdisciplinary communication in a cooperative and non-threatening environment. The outcome of the study was to highlight reduced risk of overpressure in the prospect as perceived by all parties (geoscientists, drilling engineers, management and joint venture parties). The common view on risk prompted a reassessment of the risk profiles on all the related wells in the program and allowed revision of the drilling programs and significant cost savings relative to the original forecasts for the program.

Recollections of Josef Albers

because Albers wanted color to dictate quantities and, with representational images, content tended to dictate quantities. Using cut and torn color papers was simple and quick. It allowed students to make considerably more visual decisions in the same amount of time than if they had been using pigment. He also liked the fact that each sheet of color was numbered on the back, and if more of that color was required, it could be identified and purchased at the art store by using the code number. The process of laying one color against another was much quicker than mixing color, applying it, and waiting for it to dry. The more judgments students made, the more they learned. Albers’s exercises were designed to make students explore and refine, which are positive learning processes. I believe that Albers always enjoyed seeing student work when it was put up for critique, but I am convinced that process was considerably more important to him than the end result. Over the years, I have known a number of individuals who took Albers’s color course and later taught it. I never met two teachers that taught color the same, or exactly as Albers had presented the course. Yet, most of them were effective in that students understood criteria and objectives, and applied what they learned. The pattern seemed to be using Albers’s problems in the beginning, and gradually substituting or adding problems of their own definition. Each teacher would personalize the course by emphasizing certain principles, or identifying different objectives. This certainly was true for me. I recall Albers talking about the relationship between shape and color. His point was that, when studying color, all other elements such as shape should be subjugated. Active shapes, oppositional relationships, or other visual dynamics detract from what is happening with color. I am sure this was the reasoning for his “Homage To A Square” series, since the square is the most nonintrusive and static shape possible. Taking this point-of-view to heart, I guided students away from highly active compositions, and kept the emphasis on color. I tended to see most of the free studies other than the leaf studies as landscapes. With both the free and leaf studies, I stressed composition almost as strongly as color. I found the course excellent for working with refinements, and developing student awareness of visual sensitivity through nuances. Albers conceived color exercises within the framework of general principles. The principles never changed, but problem definitions varied from year to year, especially in the color course. Albers introduced a number of principles that, within my experiDesign Issues: Volume 16, Number 2 Summer 2000 14 03 Kelly 2/18/01 6:03 PM Page 14

Visualization tools for Free Flight air-traffic management

Free Flight lets pilots modify their routes in real time. It requires new conflict detection, resolution, and visualization decision support tools. We describe a testbed for building and evaluating such tools.

Semantic Competition as The Basis of Stroop Interference: Evidence From Color-Word Matching Tasks

A color-word matching task was used to investigate the basis of Stroop interference. Subjects were shown a pair of stimuli: an ink color (e.g., a red bar) and a colored word (e.g., RED printed in red or blue) and decided whether the two items had the same meaning (meaning decisions) or whether they had the same surface color (visual decisions). In Experiment 1, the two stimuli were shown simultaneously, and conflicting visual information of the word (e.g., RED printed in blue, against a red bar) led to interference in meaning decisions, whereas conflicting verbal information (e.g., BLUE printed in red, against a red bar) produced no interference in visual decisions. In Experiment 2, as an increasing time interval was imposed between presentation of the color bar and the colored word, interference in meaning decisions diminished, whereas interference in visual decisions was established. These results suggest that semantic competition, not response competition, is the major source of Stroop and Stroop-like interference.

Visual interactive structured modelling in energy policy and management

The modelling paradigm of structured modelling is based on a systematic identification of the elements and their relations in a system under investigation. The advent of user–friendly computation and information technologies has promoted the concept of structured modelling. Different modelling paradigms have been developed, including systems thinking, soft systems approach, and influence diagrams. This paper introduces the concept of visual interactive decision modelling (VIDEMO) for energy policy and management. The VIDEMO concept is based on the formal aspects of structured modelling and are operationalised in the VIDEMO system. Selected policy and management problems in the energy field are addressed in the context of VIDEMO.

Disrupted temporal lobe connections in semantic dementia.

Semantic dementia refers to the variant of frontotemporal dementia in which there is progressive semantic deterioration and anomia in the face of relative preservation of other language and cognitive functions. Structural imaging and SPECT studies of such patients have suggested that the site of damage, and by inference the region critical to semantic processing, is the anterolateral temporal lobe, especially on the left. Recent functional imaging studies of normal participants have revealed a network of areas involved in semantic tasks. The present study used PET to examine the consequences of focal damage to the anterolateral temporal cortex for the operation of this semantic network. We measured PET activation associated with a semantic decision task relative to a visual decision task in four patients with semantic dementia compared with six age-matched normal controls. Normals activated a network of regions consistent with previous studies. The patients activated some areas consistently with the normals, including some regions of significant atrophy, but showed substantially reduced activity particularly in the left posterior inferior temporal gyrus (iTG) (Brodmann area 37/19). Voxel-based morphometry, used to identify the regions of structural deficit, revealed significant anterolateral temporal atrophy (especially on the left), but no significant structural damage to the posterior inferior temporal lobe. Other evidence suggests that the left posterior iTG is critically involved in lexical-phonological retrieval: the lack of activation here is consistent with the observation that these patients are all anomic. We conclude that changes in activity in regions distant from the patients' structural damage support the argument that their prominent anomia is due to disrupted temporal lobe connections.

Motion perception: seeing and deciding.

The primate visual system offers unprecedented opportunities for investigating the neural basis of cognition. Even the simplest visual discrimination task requires processing of sensory signals, formation of a decision, and orchestration of a motor response. With our extensive knowledge of the primate visual and oculomotor systems as a base, it is now possible to investigate the neural basis of simple visual decisions that link sensation to action. Here we describe an initial study of neural responses in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) of the cerebral cortex while alert monkeys discriminated the direction of motion in a visual display. A subset of LIP neurons carried high-level signals that may comprise a neural correlate of the decision process in our task. These signals are neither sensory nor motor in the strictest sense; rather they appear to reflect integration of sensory signals toward a decision appropriate for guiding movement. If this ultimately proves to be the case, several fascinating issues in cognitive neuroscience will be brought under rigorous physiological scrutiny.

GIS-cartography: visual decision support for spatio-temporal data handling

Abstract This paper describes a new joint Dutch research initiative ‘GIS-cartography’, combining the research efforts of the cartographers of Utrecht University, Delft University of Technology and the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC) in Enschede. The research initiative focuses on the quantification and visualization of data quality, which will be placed in the context of providing automated visual decision support in specific map use strategies. As these map use strategies can only be performed if the relevant cartographic images can be created, studies of both physical access to the data, user interfaces and the provision of sufficient support to allow the user to understand and to derive sensible conclusions from the data are included in the project. Before modules automatically visualizing data quality can be implemented, data documentation, standardization and integration have to be effected, therefore these issues are also covered.

Image quality, the ideal observer, and human performance of radiologic decision tasks

The quality of medical images must be quantified with reference to specific diagnostic tasks. Image quality is limited by fundamental physics, engineering limitations, radiation safety concerns, and imaging time constraints (among other things). There is now a gold standard for assessing human visual decision performance: the ideal Bayesian observer. Unfortunately, there are no mathematical tools to use this gold standard for realistically complex tasks. As an alternative, one can use the optimum linear discriminator (Fisher-Hotelling) model as a silver standard while en route to clinical realism. The goal of scientists working in the area is to develop mathematical models of human observers that will help equipment designers to optimize design trade-offs for specific diagnostic tasks. The current strategy is to modify the Fisher-Hotelling model to include certain limitations of the human observer visual system. The model must be both robust enough and mathematically tractable enough to be used to predict performance for clinical classification and estimation tasks. Statistical models also must be developed that describe realistic signals (lesions and abnormalities) and the normal patient structure that is the background in which these signals must be detected or identified.

Decision Support for the Design of a New Production Plant Using Visual Interactive Simulation

Following promising results in test markets and successful pilot-scale manufacturing, the Board of a major Canadian manufacturer took the decision to proceed to develop the design for a full-scale production plant for a new advanced-technology product. The success of this new product was seen as critical to the Company's future, but Company personnel had limited experience with the new production technology and with the design of plants of this large scale. Finally, competitors from the USA and Europe were known to be working on similar products resulting in a sense of urgency in getting the product to the marketplace. A visual interactive decision support system built around a simulation model was developed using a methodology designed to help management understand the plant design issues and to help them resolve various key plant design options. When completed, the model gave management a tool which was used to analyse alternative plant designs and different production and manpower scheduling scenarios under a broad range of production conditions. The intensity of worldwide competition in this new product market, and the critical importance of this product to this Canadian corporation, have led to the decision to omit the name of the corporation from this article. In addition, certain production details have been disguised.

A Visual Sensory Evaluation of the Results of Two Pattern Grading Methods

Current apparel production methods grounded in a tradition of master-apprentice training and intuition are being challenged by the introduction of Artificial Intelligence. Much of the expert knowledge needed to develop computer systems for the apparel industry is related to visual decisions made to create a garment. In this study, a sensory evaluation methodology was used to determine if visual perceptual differences existed between results of pattern grading methods using traditional and proportional techniques. An expert panel of eleven members evaluated visual effect of images graded across an entire size range. Three sets of images representing apparel on the body were selected to emphasize (1) horizontal proportion, (2) vertical proportion, and (3) proportion of details. Responses of panel members indicated neither traditional nor proportional grading maintained the visual effect referenced in the sample size across the entire size range. The goal of pattern grading needs to be redefined to account for the desired visual effect in a variety of size and body variations.

Effect of disorientation on visual analysis, familiarity decision and semantic decision on faces

The disproportionate effect of vertical inversion on the processing of faces has often been interpreted as indicating differences in perceptive strategies between upright and inverted faces. If this is true, then the mathematical relation between the performance and the angular deviation would not be a linear function. Thirty subjects processed faces shown under 10 angular deviations from upright (0 deg) to upside-down (180 deg) in steps of 20 degrees, in a random design. Three cognitive levels (a between-subject factor) were tested, namely, gender classification of unfamiliar faces, familiarity decision on famous vs. unknown faces, and semantic decision (occupation) on famous faces, with 480 items per subject and task. We found no sign of a change of processing strategies for the upright vs. inverted presentations: a clear linear function emerged. However, the nature of the task could influence the effect of the angular deviation on the performance. Results suggest that, up to now, there is no definite proof of qualitatively different mechanisms underlying the processing of upright and inverted faces, respectively.

Hierarchical Mechanisms of Fruit Selection by an Avian Frugivore

To examine behavioral mechanisms of fruit selection, American Robins (Turdus migratorius) were studied foraging on Crataegus monogyna fruits in western Oregon. Robins faced a hierarchical decision—making process of fruit selection: (1) in which shrub to feed (decisions among shrubs); (2) which fruits to pick (visual decisions among fruits); and (3) which fruits to shallow once picked (within—bill decisions). Field observations of natural and experimentally manipulated populations of C. monogyna shrubs demonstrated that choices made by robins among shrubs were correlated with three plant traits (decision cues):fruit abundance, fruit size, and fruit pulpiness. These cues were themselves used hierarchically, so that when higher—ranking cues were held constant by manipulating shrubs, the next available cue became important. Once shrubs were selected, field and aviary work revealed that robins then made visual choices among fruits correlated with fruit size. However, no evidence was found to suggest that robins made within—bill decisions; once fruits were picked, additional discrimination did not occur. I suggest that a hierarchical process of fruit selection may have evolved to enable frugivores to cope with environmental uncertainty that is typical of fruiting systems. Such flexibility in foraging behavior may, in itself, promote variability within and among fruiting plants and therefore help to explain why so few general patterns have been identified in fruiting plant—frugivore relationships.

Graphics for environmental decision making

Applications, problems, research needs, and future requirements of visual decision support systems, the systems relied on for environmental care and planning, are discussed. Environmental decision software, visual techniques, data types, and geometries are outlined. The examples of environmental applications for visual decision support systems-pollution monitoring and water risk assessment-are presented. >