The detailed code fits on three pages and uses, as sole data structure, two arrays of integers, called the Corner Table. The current implementation, which is publicly available, use a parallelogram prediction, but can be easily combined with other schemes for compressing vertex location. Both the Topological Surgery and Edgebreaker have received Best Paper awards. Scientific simulations produce data in the form of sample points with intensity values, which are often visualized by drawing level sets or isosurfaces-surfaces of points with the same intensity. One tool that can help in choosing threshold values for interactive exploration of such data is the contour tree, which have been developed by a number of people including van Kreveld, Bajaj, and Pascucci.
Contour trees encode the evolution of isosurfaces as the threshold parameter varies.
It can be used to compute seed sets for tracing whole or partial isosurfaces, to determine important values for the threshold parameter, and to support flexible contouring. Carr, Snoeyink and Axen developed a simple algorithm to compute a contour tree without computing the set of all isosurfaces, which enables the use of the contour tree as a data analysis tool. New compression and progressive transmission techniques are needed to support the interactive exploitation of this data. The global view of the entire dataset provided by the control terrain may help focus interactive inspection on the relevant subsets of the data. We have implemented an initial prototype for the user interaction on the client with Lutz Kettner, a postdoctoral researcher at UNC Chapel Hill.