Focus on Scientific Visualization

One of the important issues of Scientific Visualization is the utilization of the broad bandwidth of the human sensory system in steering and interpreting complex processes and simulations involving voluminous data sets across diverse scientific disciplines. This book presents the state-of-the-art in visualization techniques both as an overview for the inquiring scientist, and as a solid platform from which developers may extend existing techniques or devise new ones to meet the specific needs of their problems. A secondary goal in crafting this volume has been to provide a vehicle for teaching of state-of-the-art techniques in scientific visualization. The first part of the book covers the application areas fluid flow visualization in medicine, and environmental protection. The second set of chapters explain fundamentals of scientific visualization. It comprises contributions on data structuring and data administration, data modeling, and rendering. A final section is devoted to auditory representation of scientific data.

Auteur
Hans Hagen is heading the research group for Computer Graphics and Computer Geometry at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, and is Scientific Director of the research lab Intelligent Visualization and Simulation at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). His research domains are geometric modeling and scientific visualization.

Contenu
Fluid Flow Visualization.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Experimental Flow Visualization.- 3 Computer Graphics Flow Visualization.- 4 Presentation Techniques.- 5 Conclusions and Research Directions.- References.- Volume Visualization in Medicine: Techniques and Applications.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Imaging Modalities.- 3 Methods.- 4 Applications.- 5 Conclusions.- References.- Application of Visualization in Environmental Protection.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Applications of Software Systems in Environmental Protection.- 3 Requirements of Visualization Systems.- 4 Methods and Applications.- 5 Conclusions.- References.- Data Structures in Scientific Visualization.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Computer Based Problem Handling.- 3 Data Types of Dependent Variables.- 4 Coordinate Systems.- 5 Connectivity.- 6 Zone Data.- 7 Auxiliary Information.- 8 Relationship between Data Sets.- 9 Consideration of Time.- 10 Data Structures in Different Software Packages.- 11 Application Package Independent Data Access Software.- 12 Conclusions.- References.- A Visualization-Based Model for a Scientific Database System.- 1 Introduction.- 2 A Paradigm for Interdisciplinary Scientific Research.- 3 Nature of Scientific Data.- 4 Nature of Scientific Data Visualization.- 5 Toward a Target Scientific Database System.- 6 Conclusion.- References.- Volume Synthesis Principles.- 1 Background.- 2 Motivation.- 3 Voxelization Algorithms.- 4 Discrete Ray Tracing.- 5 Concluding Note.- References.- Surface Interpolation from Cross Sections.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Topological Reconstruction.- 3 Geometrie Reconstruction.- 4 Triangulated Surfaces.- 5 Pyramidal Extrapolation.- 6 Smooth Surface Interpolation.- 7 Volume Oriented Reconstruction.- 8 Interpolation by Spatial Delaunay Triangulations.- 9 Reconstruction with Spatial Grids.- 10 Acquisition of Data.- 11 Interaction.- 12 Concluding Remarks.- References.- Modeling and Visualizing Volumetrie and Surface-on-Surface Data.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Data.- 3 Visualization Methods.- 4 Modeling Methods.- References.- Curve and Surface Interrogation.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Reflection Line Method.- 3 Isophotes.- 4 Orthotomics.- 5 Polarity Method.- 6 Focal Surfaces.- References.- Sorting for Polyhedron Compositing.- 1 Polyhedron Compositing.- 2 A General Sorting Algorithm.- 3 Adaptive Mesh Refinement.- 4 Sorting for the AMR Method.- 5 Interpolation and Contour Surfaces.- 6 Sorting for Cloud Visualization.- 7 Results.- References.- Joining Volume with Surface Rendering.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Converting Data.- 3 Combining Rendering Methods.- 4 Applications - Two Examples.- References.- The Volume Priority Z-Buffer.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Overview of the Algorithm.- 3 Projection Strategy.- 4 Block Processing.- 5 Conclusion.- References.- A Fourier Technique for Volume Rendering.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Fourier Projection-Slice Theorem.- 3 Fourier Volume Rendering.- 4 Data Shifting.- 5 Resampling Implementation Details.- 6 Zero Padding and Premultiplication.- 7 Resampling Rate.- 8 Conclusion.- References.- An Improved Shading Algorithm for Radiosity Based Renderers.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Rendering.- 3 Comparisons.- 4 Results.- 5 Implementation.- References.- Some Annotations on X-ray Tracing.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Underlying Principle.- 3 X-ray Tracing Stills.- References.- Auditory Representation of Scientific Data.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Technical Considerations.- 3 Sensory and Perceptual considerations.- 4 Experiments in Auditory Data Representation.- 5 Systems for Research in Auditory Data Representation.- 6 Evaluation of Auditory Data Representations.- 7 Summary and Conclusions.- References.- Color Illustrations.- 1 Fluid Flow Visualization.- 2 Volume Visualization in Medicine: Techniques and Applications.- 3 Application of Visualization in Environmental Protection.- 4 Data Structures in Scientific Visualization.- 5 A Visualization-Based Model for a Scientific Database System.- 6 Visualizing Volumetrie and Surface-on-Surface Data.- 7 Curve and Surface Interrogation.- 8 Sorting for Polyhedron Compositing.- 9 Joining Volume with Surface Rendering.- 10 An Improved Shading Algorithm for Radiosity Based Renderers.