Sneak Peek at SciVis 2012

SciVis at VisWeek 2012 is the premier forum for advances in scientific visualization. The event-packed week brings together researchers and practitioners from academia, government, and industry to explore their shared interests in tools, techniques, and technology. The images below provide a peek at some of the works that will be presented at the SciVis Conference on Oct 14-19 in Seattle.


The density distribution rendered from a dark matter simulation using the tetrahedral tessellation. Large-scale structures like sheets (gray), filaments (yellow) and halos (white), as well as caustics on smaller scales, become clearly visible..
Credits: Ralf Kaehler, Oliver Hahn, and Tom Abel; Stanford University


A system to enable neuroscientists to interactively explore petascale volume data resulting from high-throughput electron microscopy data streams where the data can be visualized while the acquisition is still in progress.
Credits: Markus Hadwiger (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology), Johanna Beyer (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology), Won-Ki Jeong Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology) , and Hanspeter Pfister (Harvard University)


A revolving door, as is typically used in building entrances. The simulation of the air flow (top left) near such a door reveals how large swaths of cold air enter the building, incurring energy losses. Image (top right) shows how the addition of an air curtain blowing warm air blocks cold air, preventing it from cooling down the interior. This, however, complicates the flow structure greatly so that neither temperature plots nor contours, path- or streamlines really help in understanding the flow behavior (bottom left). The solution to this problem are LCS (bottom right), giving structural information about this complicated time-dependent flow.
Credits: Benjamin Schindler (ETH Zurich), Raphael Fuchs (ETH Zurich), Stefan Barp (Air Flow Consulting), Jurgen Waser (VRVis), Armin Pobitzer (University of Bergen), Robert Carnecky (ETH Zurich), Kresimir Matković(VRVis), and Ronald Peikert (ETH Zurich)


A system for automatic detection and visualization of qualitative hemodynamic characteristics in cerebral aneurysms. Contour rendering (top left) of the impingement zone and its safety margin. Within the contour the quality function is mapped to opacity (yellow). Depiction of the inflow jet by an arrow glyph (top right). The color-coded inflow jet glyph is used in (center left) with an impingement zone near to the ostium. A second zone could occur at the dome point. The correlation between inflow jet (glyph) and impingement zone (green contours) with wall shear stress (WSS) distribution is shown in (center right). The magnitude of WSS is mapped to opacity. Qualitative comparison of the inflow jet between the automatically and manually extracted inflow jet (bottom row).
Credits: Rocco Gasteiger (University of Magdeburg), Dirk J. Lehmann (University of Magdeburg), Roy van Pelt Eindhoven University of Technology, Gabor Janiga (University of Magdeburg), Oliver Beuing (University Hospital Magdeburg), Anna Vilanova (Eindhoven University of Technology), Holger Theisel (University of Magdeburg), and Bernhard Preim (University of Magdeburg)


Composition of different visualization techniques. Glyph (top left) and tensor line packing (top right) in the metric tensor (left halves) and inverse field. Color map indicates local anisotropy. Major eigenvector lines are blue, lines that follow the minor eigenvector field are red. Anisotropy color map mapped to a standard sphere texture (bottom left). The distortion present in standard flow surface texturing is compensated by glyph shapes in the inverse tensor field, as indicated by an undistorted sphere texture. Tensor-line geometry can be rendered on flow surfaces directly to indicate stretching directions (bottom right). Mapping tensor area to transparency mimics physical thinning of flow surfaces and gives a smoke-surface like impression.
Credits: Harald Obermaier and Kenneth I. Joy (University of California, Davis)

A listing of all accepted papers is available at SciVis 2012 and TVCG 2012.

Sneak Peek at InfoVis 2012

InfoVis at VisWeek 2012 brings together researchers and practitioners with a shared interest in visualization techniques, tools, and technology. Below images provide a preview of novel research ideas and innovative applications areas of information visualization that will be presented at the conference in Seattle, Oct 14-19, 2012.


In a map of Seattle (left) showing 86 restaurants (black dots), a user selects a focus region (middle). At the boundary of that region (green circle), labels are placed for a selection of the restaurants; curved lines connect the labels with the actual sites of the restaurants. Every labeled restaurant represents a cluster of restaurants, which we indicate by drawing a stack of rectangles with the label on top; when clicking a label, a detailed labelling for the corresponding cluster pops up (right).
Paper:Algorithms for Labeling Focus Regions
Credits: Martin Fink, Jan-Henrik Haunert, André Schulz, Joachim Spoerhase, and Alexander Wolff


Storyline visualizations of the movie Star Wars. (A) shows a storyline visualization augmented with spatial and mobility information of the characters, generated by our technique. (B) shows the hand-drawn illustration presented in XKCD’s “Movie Narrative Charts”. (Ref: R. Munroe. Xkcd #657: Movie narrative charts. http://xkcd.com/ 657, December 2009.)
Paper:Design Considerations for Optimizing Storyline Visualizations
Credits:Yuzuru Tanahashi and Kwan-Liu Ma


Comparison Layout: Two anchors from the people facet, M Czerwinski and G Robertson, partition the resources into three groups.
Paper:PivotPaths: Strolling through Faceted Information Spaces
Credits:Marian Dörk, Nathalie Henry Riche, Gonzalo Ramos, and Susan Dumais


Storyline visualizations of the movie Star Wars. (A) shows a storyline visualization augmented with spatial and mobility information of the characters, generated by our technique. (B) shows the hand-drawn illustration presented in XKCD’s “Movie Narrative Charts”. (Ref: R. Munroe. Xkcd #657: Movie narrative charts. http://xkcd.com/ 657, December 2009.)
Paper:Design Considerations for Optimizing Storyline Visualizations
Credits:Yuzuru Tanahashi and Kwan-Liu Ma


Natural behaviors observed when people compare information printed on paper: side-by-side arrangement, shine-through, and folding.
Paper:Interaction Support for Visual Comparison Inspired by Natural Behavior
Credits:Christian Tominski, Camilla Forsell, and Jimmy Johansson


Bar chart displayed using the Handy renderer for Processing.
Paper:Sketchy Rendering for Information Visualization
Credits:Jo Wood, Petra Isenberg, Tobias Isenberg, Jason Dykes, Nadia Boukhelifa, and Aidan Slingsby


A listing of all accepted papers is available at InfoVis 2012 website.

Sneak Peek at VAST 2012

Visual Analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supported by highly interactive visual interfaces. People use visual analytics tools and techniques in all aspects of science, engineering, business, and government to synthesize information into knowledge; derive insight from massive, dynamic, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments; and communicate assessments effectively for action. The images below provide a peek at some of the works that will be presented at the VAST session at Visweek Conference during Oct 14-19 in Seattle.


Augmenting human visual processing using saliency.
Credits: J.Crouser and R.Chang, Tufts University



Emphasizing the relevance of a human body view through elliptical shapes (top). Smart Super Views: The relevance of an image is mapped to elliptical shapes and decreases from left to right (bottom).
Credits: Gabriel Mistelbauer(Vienna University of Technology), Hamed Bouzari (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Rudiger Schernthaner (Medical University of Vienna), Ivan Baclija (Kaiser-Franz-Josef Hospital Vienna), Arnold Ko chl (Kaiser-Franz-Josef Hospital Vienna), Stefan Bruckner (Vienna University of Technology), Milos Sramek (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Meister Eduard Groller (Vienna University of Technology)


Visually analyzing the horseshoe bat ear.
Credits: M. S. Hossain(Virginia Tech), P. K. R. Ojili (Virginia Tech), C. Grimm (Washington University), R. Muller (Virginia Tech), L. T. Watson (Virginia Tech,), N. Ramakrishnan (Virginia Tech)



Eye movement analysis.
Credits: Gennady Andrienko and Natalia Andrienko (Fraunhofer Institute IAIS), Michael Burch and Daniel Weiskopf (University Stuttgart)

A listing of all accepted papers is available at VAST 2012.

2012 IEEE VisWeek SciVis Contest Winner

The SciVis Contest 2012 focussed on the field of computational material science. The contest challenge was to devise a visualization that allows for exploring the phase transitions of a particular ferroelectric material when decreasing the temperature gradually for the provided datasets.

The winner of the contest was the entry named "Visualization of Polarization Domains in Barium Titanate" by Katrin Scharnowski, Michael Krone, Filip Sadlo, and Philipp Beck, from the University of Stuttgart, Germany.


(Click image to view movie)
Key Moments of the Evolution of the Polarization Domains in Barium Titanate.
Credits: Katrin Scharnowski, Michael Krone, Filip Sadlo, Philipp Beck, University of Stuttgart, Germany.

The authors will present their work and a new contest for 2013 will be announced at the VisWeek conference in Seattle on Oct 18th at 6PM.

Sneak Peek at BioVis 2012

BioVis 2012 will feature exciting talks on cutting-edge research in biological data visualization. The images below provide a peek at some of the works that will be presented at the BioVis Symposium on Oct 14-15 in Seattle.


Dynamic channels in biomolecular systems. Visualization of molecular paths, i.e., components of the dynamic cavity structure, in bacteriorhodopsin. Both molecular surface and secondary structure representations are used for the bacteriorhodopsin monomers. Each color indicates a different path component.
Credits: Norbert Lindow (Zuse Institute Berlin), Daniel Baum (Zuse Institute Berlin), Ana-Nicoleta Bondar (Freie Universitaet Berlin), Hans-Christian Hege (Zuse Institute Berlin)


enRoute -- dynamic path extraction from biological pathway maps. The original pathway map is augmented to hint at parts with interesting underlying experimental data and let analysts select paths for detailed analysis.
Credits: Christian Partl (Graz University of Technology), Alexander Lex (Graz University of Technology), Marc Streit (Johannes Kepler University Linz), Denis Kalkofen (Graz University of Technology), Karl Kashofer (Medical University of Graz), Dieter Schmalstieg (Graz University of Technology)


Epithelial cell reconstruction and visualization of the developing Drosophila wing imaginal disc. The cell faces have been color shaded as a function of the cell's volume.
Credits: David Breen (Drexel University), Thomas Widmann (Centro de Genomica e Investigacion Oncologica), Linge Bai (Drexel University), Frank Julicher (Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems), Christian Dahmann (Dresden University of Technology)


Visualizing Honeybee brain activity in real time. The honeybee brain encodes odors by activity patterns of units called glomeruli in the antennal lobe. These patterns can be observed in calcium imaging movies. Top: raw data. Bottom: processed.
Credits: Martin Strauch (University of Konstanz), Marc P. Broeg (University of Konstanz), Clemens Müthing (University of Konstanz), Paul Szyszka (University of Konstanz), Oliver Deussen (University of Konstanz), C. Giovanni Galizia (University of Konstanz), Dorit Merhof (University of Konstanz)


Implicit surfaces for interactive cavity analysis of molecular simulations of proteins. A cavity component is selected in a scatterplot (upper left), which can be observed also on the temporal scatterplot (upper right). Selected cavity components are shown in the context of the protein at three different time steps (bottom).
Credits: Julius Parulek (Department of Informatics, University of Bergen), Cagatay Turkay (Department of Informatics, University of Bergen), Nathalie Reuter (CBU, University of Bergen), Ivan Viola (Department of Informatics, University of Bergen)

A listing of all accepted papers and posters is available at BioVis 2012 website.