DevLan/vispubs huggingface dataset:
Visualization of Computer-Modeled Forests for Forest Management
Authors: Mahnas Jean Mohammadi-Aragh, Ikuko Fujisaki, Derek Irby, David L. Evans, Robert J. Moorhead, Scott Roberts
Published at EuroVis, 2005

Forest management is a costly and time-consuming activity. Remote sensing has the potential to improve the process by making it cheaper and more efficient, but only if appropriate characteristics can be determined from computer-models. This paper describes the implementation of a forest visualization system and a corresponding user study that tests the accuracy of parameter estimation and forest characterization. The study uses data obtained from field-surveys to generate a computer-modeled forest. Five different stands were tested. Based on the quantitative results obtained, generally, there is no statistically significant difference in parameter estimation when comparing field-recorded videos and computer-generated videos.
Feature congestion: a measure of display clutter
Authors: Ruth Rosenholtz, Yuanzhen Li, Jonathan Mansfield, Zhenlan Jin
Published at CHI, 2005

Management of clutter is an important factor in the design of user interfaces and information visualizations, allowing improved usability and aesthetics. However, clutter is not a well defined concept. In this paper, we present the Feature Congestion measure of display clutter. This measure is based upon extensive modeling of the saliency of elements of a display, and upon a new operational definition of clutter. The current implementation is based upon two features: color and luminance contrast. We have tested this measure on maps that observers ranked by perceived clutter. Results show good agreement between the observers' rankings and our measure of clutter. Furthermore, our measure can be used to make design suggestions in an automated UI critiquing tool.
Improving aviation safety with information visualization: a flight simulation study
Authors: Cecilia R. Aragon, Marti A. Hearst
Published at CHI, 2005

Many aircraft accidents each year are caused by encounters with invisible airflow hazards. Recent advances in aviation sensor technology offer the potential for aircraft-based sensors that can gather large amounts of airflow velocity data in real-time. With this influx of data comes the need to study how best to present it to the pilot - a cognitively overloaded user focused on a primary task other than that of information visualization.We focus on one particular aviation application, but the results may be relevant to user interfaces in other operationally stressful environments.
prefuse: a toolkit for interactive information visualization
Authors: Jeffrey Heer, Stuart K. Card, James A. Landay
Published at CHI, 2005

Although information visualization (infovis) technologies have proven indispensable tools for making sense of complex data, wide-spread deployment has yet to take hold, as successful infovis applications are often difficult to author and require domain-specific customization. To address these issues, we have created prefuse, a software framework for creating dynamic visualizations of both structured and unstructured data. prefuse provides theoretically-motivated abstractions for the design of a wide range of visualization applications, enabling programmers to string together desired components quickly to create and customize working visualizations. To evaluate prefuse we have built both existing and novel visualizations testing the toolkit's flexibility and performance, and have run usability studies and usage surveys finding that programmers find the toolkit usable and effective.
Studying the effectiveness of MOVE: a contextually optimized in-vehicle navigation system
Authors: Joonhwan Lee, Jodi Forlizzi, Scott E. Hudson
Published at CHI, 2005

In-vehicle navigation has changed substantially in recent years, due to the advent of computer generated maps and directions. However, these maps are still problematic, due to a mismatch between the complexity of the maps and the attentional demands of driving. In response to this problem, we are developing the MOVE (Maps Optimized for Vehicular Environments) system. This system will provide situationally appropriate map information by presenting information that uses appropriate amounts of the driver's attention. In this paper, we describe our findings of studies to help shape the design of the MOVE system, including studies on map reading and in-vehicle navigation, and studies on the effectiveness of a variety of contextually optimized route map visualizations in a simulated driving context.Results show that contextually optimized displays designed for the MOVE system should significantly reduce perceptual load in the context of driving. In our laboratory experiment there was a six-fold decrease in the total map display fixation time and nearly threefold decrease in the number of glances needed to interpret the contextually optimized display compared to a static display.
Use of eye movements as feedforward training for a synthetic aircraft inspection task
Authors: Sajay Sadasivan, Joel S. Greenstein, Anand K. Gramopadhye, Andrew T. Duchowski
Published at CHI, 2005

Aircraft inspection is a vital element in assuring safety and reliability of the air transportation system. The human inspector performing visual inspection of an aircraft is the backbone of this process and training is an effective strategy for improving their inspection performance. Previous studies have shown offline feedback training to be effective in improving subsequent visual inspection performance. Because experienced inspectors are known to adopt a better inspection strategy than novices, providing visualization of experts' cognitive processes a priori can accelerate novices' adoption of the experts' strategy. Using eye tracking equipment, we record the point of regard of an expert inspector performing an inspection task in a virtual reality simulator. Analysis of their eye movements leads to a visualization of their scanpaths and allows us to display the inspector's visual search (hence cognitive) strategy. We show how providing this type of scanpath-based feedforward training of novices leads to improved accuracy performance in the simulator coupled with an observed speed-accuracy tradeoff. We contend that the tradeoff results from trained novices adopting a slower paced strategy through increased fixation durations, suggesting trained novices learn a more deliberate target search/discrimination strategy that requires more time to execute.
Visualization of mappings between schemas
Authors: George G. Robertson, Mary Czerwinski, John E. Churchill
Published at CHI, 2005

In this paper we describe a novel approach to the visualization of the mapping between two schemas. Current approaches to visually defining such a mapping fail when the schemas or maps become large. The new approach uses various information visualization techniques to simplify the view, making it possible for users to effectively deal with much larger schemas and maps. A user study verifies that the new approach is useful, usable, and effective. The primary contribution is a demonstration of novel ways to effectively present highly complex information.
Who gets to know what when: configuring privacy permissions in an awareness application
Authors: Sameer Patil, Jennifer Lai
Published at CHI, 2005

We report on a study (N=36) of user preferences for balancing awareness with privacy. Participants defined permissions for sharing of location, availability, calendar information and instant messaging (IM) activity within an application called mySpace. MySpace is an interactive visualization of the physical workplace that provides dynamic information about people, places and equipment. We found a significant preference for defining privacy permissions at the group level. While "family" received high levels of awareness sharing, interestingly, "team" was granted comparable levels during business hours at work. Surprisingly, presenting participants with a detailed list of all pieces of personal context to which the system had access, did not result in more conservative privacy settings. Although location was the most sensitive aspect of awareness, participants were comfortable disclosing room-level location information to their team members at work. Our findings suggest utilizing grouping mechanisms to balance privacy control with configuration burden, and argue for increased system transparency to build trust.
2D Maps for Visual Analysis and Retrieval in Large Multi-Feature 3D Model Databases
Authors: Benjamin Bustos, Daniel A. Keim, Christian Panse, Tobias Schreck
Published at Vis, 2004

Multimedia objects are often described by high-dimensional feature vectors which can be used for retrieval and clustering tasks. We have built an interactive retrieval system for 3D model databases that implements a variety of different feature transforms. Recently, we have enhanced the functionality of our system by integrating a SOM-based visualization module. In this poster demo, we show how 2D maps can be used to improve the effectiveness of retrieval, clustering, and over-viewing tasks in a 3D multimedia system.
A graphics hardware-based vortex detection and visualization system
Authors: Simon Stegmaier, Thomas Ertl
Published at Vis, 2004

Feature detection in flow fields is a well-researched area, but practical application is often difficult due to the numerical complexity of the algorithms preventing interactive use and due to noise in experimental or high-resolution simulation data sets. We present an integrated system that provides interactive denoising, vortex detection, and visualisation of vector data on Cartesian grids. All three major phases are implemented in such a way that the system runs completely on a modern GPU once the vector field is downloaded into graphics memory. The application aspect of our paper is twofold. First, we show how recently presented, prototypical GPU-based algorithms for filtering, numerical computation, and volume rendering can be combined into one productive system by handling all idiosyncrasies of a chosen graphics card. Second, we demonstrate that the significant speedup achieved compared to an optimized software implementation now allows interactive exploration of characteristic structures in turbulent flow fields.
Adaptive 4-8 texture hierarchies
Authors: Lok M. Hwa, Mark A. Duchaineau, Kenneth I. Joy
Published at Vis, 2004

We address the texture level-of-detail problem for extremely large surfaces such as terrain during realtime, view-dependent rendering. A novel texture hierarchy is introduced based on 4-8 refinements of raster tiles, in which the texture grids in effect rotate 45 degrees for each level of refinement. This hierarchy provides twice as many levels of detail as conventional quadtree-style refinement schemes such as mipmaps, and thus provides per-pixel view-dependent filtering that is twice as close to the ideal cutoff frequency for an average pixel. Because of this more gradual change in low-pass filtering, and due to the more precise emulation of the ideal cutoff frequency, we find in practice that the transitions between texture levels of detail are not perceptible. This allows rendering systems to avoid the complexity and performance costs of per-pixel blending between texture levels of detail. The 4-8 texturing scheme is integrated into a variant of the real-time optimally adapting meshes (ROAM) algorithm for view-dependent multiresolution mesh generation. Improvements to ROAM included here are: the diamond data structure as a streamlined replacement for the triangle bintree elements, the use of low-pass-filtered geometry patches in place of individual triangles, integration of 4-8 textures, and a simple out-of-core data access mechanism for texture and geometry tiles.
Anisotropic volume rendering for extremely dense, thin line data
Authors: Gregory L. Schussman, Kwan-Liu Ma
Published at Vis, 2004

Many large scale physics-based simulations which take place on PC clusters or supercomputers produce huge amounts of data including vector fields. While these vector data such as electromagnetic fields, fluid flow fields, or particle paths can be represented by lines, the sheer number of the lines overwhelms the memory and computation capability of a high-end PC used for visualization. Further, very dense or intertwined lines, rendered with traditional visualization techniques, can produce unintelligible results with unclear depth relationships between the lines and no sense of global structure. Our approach is to apply a lighting model to the lines and sample them into an anisotropic voxel representation based on spherical harmonics as a preprocessing step. Then we evaluate and render these voxels for a given view using traditional volume rendering. For extremely large line based datasets, conversion to anisotropic voxels reduces the overall storage and rendering for O(n) lines to O(1) with a large constant that is still small enough to allow meaningful visualization of the entire dataset at nearly interactive rates on a single commodity PC.
Atlas-Aware Laplacian Smoothing
Authors: Peter G. Sibley, Gabriel Taubin
Published at Vis, 2004

We consider an image, a result of sampling over a finite two dimensional regular grid a vector valued function of two variables. There is a wealth of work in both theory and application of image processing operations. Our approach is to map into the parameter space then perform image processing operations there. Laplacian smoothing is the building block for defining linear filters, which can be described in terms of polynomials of the Laplacian operator. We focus on extending basic Laplacian smoothing to continuous vector valued functions irregularly sampled on multi-chart parameterized surfaces. Our goal is to efficiently perform Laplacian smoothing with out introducing seam artifacts. We present an algorithm for Laplacian smoothing over a texture atlas which takes into account the discontinuities imposed by the charts. Our general approach is based on the finite volume method, and the graph Laplacian used in geometric signal processing. In image processing, the Laplacian of an image is obtained by convolving the image with the following 3×3 kernel:
Augmented reality with tangible auto-fabricated models for molecular biology applications
Authors: Alexandre Gillet, Michel F. Sanner, Daniel Stoffler, David S. Goodsell, Arthur J. Olson
Published at Vis, 2004

The evolving technology of computer auto-fabrication ("3D printing") now makes it possible to produce physical models for complex biological molecules and assemblies. We report on an application that demonstrates the use of auto-fabricated tangible models and augmented reality for research and education in molecular biology, and for enhancing the scientific environment for collaboration and exploration. We have adapted an augmented reality system to allow virtual 3D representations (generated by the Python Molecular Viewer) to be overlaid onto a tangible molecular model. Users can easily change the overlaid information, switching between different representations of the molecule, displays of molecular properties such as electrostatics, or dynamic information. The physical model provides a powerful, intuitive interface for manipulating the computer models, streamlining the interface between human intent, the physical model, and the computational activity.
Automatic Fast Detection of Tumor Suspect Areas on CT Scan
Authors: Matei Mancas, Bernard Gosselin, Benoît Macq
Published at Vis, 2004

Our research deals with a fully automatic and fast visualization of possible tumoral areas on CT Scan images. To achieve this task, we use the bilateral symmetry of the human body and the asymmetry introduced by the presence of tumors. Our work was initially dedicated to the head and neck area but it should work well for any other body part and even better for more symmetric areas like the brain.
Building an Ontology of Visualization
Authors: David J. Duke, Ken Brodlie, David A. Duce
Published at Vis, 2004

Recent activity within the UK National e-Science Programme has identified a need to establish an ontology for visualization. Motivation for this includes defining web and grid services for visualization (the ‘semantic grid’), supporting collaborative work, curation, and underpinning visualization research and education. At a preliminary meeting, members of the UK visualization community identified a skeleton for the ontology. We have started to build on this by identifying how existing work might be related and utilized. We believe that the greatest challenge is reaching a consensus within the visualization community itself. This poster is intended as one step in this process, setting out the perceived needs for the ontology, and sketching initial directions. It is hoped that this will lead to debate, feedback and involvement across the community.
Capillary Histology Imagery Visualization and Exploration
Authors: Michael Gleicher, Tom Brunet, K. Evan Nowak, Liz Osten, Matt McElwee, Kevin Tanty, Adam Gepner, Garet Lahvis
Published at Vis, 2004

In this poster, we describe the Capillary Histology Imagery Visualization and Exploration (CHIVE) project that is developing new tools for studying the vascular system in the mouse brain. Our ultimate goal is to understand the micro-vascular architecture of the brain and its role in development and disease. The size and complexity of brain vasculature demands a new methodology for study. We are developing such a methodology for imaging and examining the micro-vasculature of the mouse brain. To study the vascular system in the brain, we need an imaging modality capable of seeing the capillaries, the smallest vessels that ultimately deliver oxygen and nutrients from the blood. We are interested in the patternings of these vessels throughout the brain. This requires an imaging modality capable of extremely high resolution: we must resolve individual capillaries that are a few microns wide, over the entire brain. At present, the only method capable of this resolution is histology and montage-microscopy: physically sectioning a specimen and imaging it under a light microscope. The histological process produces a unique dataset containing an immense amount of small details over a large volume. To make use of this data, we have needed to develop a new suite of tools for visualization and analysis. The result is a visualization system that allows a scientist to work with the large image sets that result from histology in a way that supports exploration and analysis that is tuned to the unusual features of the image sets. In the poster summarized in this abstract we will outline our protocol for data collection and the types of data it creates. We will describe how the features of the data lead to challenges for visualization and analysis. We will describe our preliminary system for working with the data, CHIVE, and describe how it responds to some of these challenges. We conclude by discussing some of the issues CHIVE does not presently address.
Centroidal Voronoi tessellation based algorithms for vector fields visualization and segmentation
Authors: Qiang Du 0001, Xiaoqiang Wang 0002
Published at Vis, 2004

A new method for the simplification and the visualization of vector fields is presented based on the notion of centroidal Voronoi tessellations (CVT's). A CVT is a special Voronoi tessellation for which the generators of the Voronoi regions in the tessellation are also the centers of mass (or means) with respect to a prescribed density. A distance function in both the spatial and vector spaces is introduced to measure the similarity of the spatially distributed vector fields. Based on such a distance, vector fields are naturally clustered and their simplified representations are obtained. Our method combines simple geometric intuitions with the rigorously established optimality properties of the CVTs. It is simple to describe, easy to understand and implement. Numerical examples are also provided to illustrate the effectiveness and competitiveness of the CVT-based vector simplification and visualization methodology.
Code Checking and Visualization of an Architecture Design
Authors: Rong Xu, Wawan Solihin, Zhiyong Huang
Published at Vis, 2004

Computer graphics has be successfully applied to architecture design. There is more demand to new applications. One of them, to be addressed in this work, is the code checking and visualization of the checking results.
Compatible triangulations of spatial decompositions
Authors: William J. Schroeder, Berk Geveci, Mathieu Malaterre
Published at Vis, 2004

We describe a general algorithm to produce compatible 3D triangulations from spatial decompositions. Such triangulations match edges and faces across spatial cell boundaries, solving several problems in graphics and visualization including the crack problem found in adaptive isosurface generation, triangulation of arbitrary grids (including unstructured grids), clipping, and the interval tetrahedrization problem. The algorithm produces compatible triangulations on a cell-by-cell basis, using a modified Delaunay triangulation with a simple point ordering rule to resolve degenerate cases and produce unique triangulations across cell boundaries. The algorithm is naturally parallel since it requires no neighborhood cell information, only a unique, global point numbering. We show application of this algorithm to adaptive contour generation; tetrahedrization of unstructured meshes; clipping and interval volume mesh generation.
Compression, Segmentation, and Modeling of Large-Scale Filamentary Volumetric Data
Authors: Bruce H. McCormick, Purna Doddapaneni, David Mayerich, Zeki Melek, John Keyser
Published at Vis, 2004

We describe a method for processing large amounts of volumetric data collected from a Knife Edge Scanning Microscope (KESM). The neuronal data that we acquire consists of thin, branching structures extending over very large regions that prior volumetric representations have difficulty dealing with efficiently. Since the full volume data set can be extremely large, on-the-fly processing of the data is necessary.
Constrained inverse volume rendering for planetary nebulae
Authors: Marcus A. Magnor, Gordon L. Kindlmann, Neb Duric, Charles D. Hansen
Published at Vis, 2004

Determining the three-dimensional structure of distant astronomical objects is a challenging task, given that terrestrial observations provide only one viewpoint. For this task, bipolar planetary nebulae are interesting objects of study because of their pronounced axial symmetry due to fundamental physical processes. Making use of this symmetry constraint, we present a technique to automatically recover the axisymmetric structure of bipolar planetary nebulae from two-dimensional images. With GPU-based volume rendering driving a nonlinear optimization, we estimate the nebula's local emission density as a function of its radial and axial coordinates, and we recover the orientation of the nebula relative to Earth. The optimization refines the nebula model and its orientation by minimizing the differences between the rendered image and the original astronomical image. The resulting model enables realistic 3D visualizations of planetary nebulae, e.g. for educational purposes in planetarium shows. In addition, the recovered spatial distribution of the emissive gas allows validating computer simulation results of the astrophysical formation processes of planetary nebulae.