Volume Graphics: What’s in the Cards Baoquan Chen Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Historical Perspective - 70’s–Early 80’s 1970 First report - 3D oscilloscopic images 1970's Medical imaging D surface presentation [Sunguroff&Greenberg] 1979 Cuberille [Herman & Liu] 1981 Depth only shading [Herman & Udupa] 1982 Octree machine [Meagher] Voxel processor [Goldwasser et al.] 1984 Ray casting [Tuy & Tuy] 1985 Cube-1 architecture [Kaufman et al.] Back-to-front & Front-to-back, Depth gradient shading [Gordon et al.] Contextual shading [Chen et al.]

1986 3D scan conversion [Kaufman & Shimony] Grey-level shading [Hoehne & Bernstein] 1987 Marching cubes [Lorensen & Cline] NSF ViSC Report 1988 Volume rendering [Levoy; Drebin et al; Upson & Keeler; Sabella] Dividing Cubes [Cline et al.] 1989 Splatting [Westover] Historical Perspective - Late 80’s

1989, 1990 – 04 Biannual VolVis Symposia 1990 – 05 Visualization Conference 1995 – 05 Information Visualization Symposia 1996 ONR Volume Graphics Workshop 1999,01,03,05 Volume Graphics Workshops 2004 NIH/NSF VRC’04 Historical Perspective- The 90’s-00’s

A Summary of the Status Lots of papers Volume visualization a commodity Some commercial visualization systems Cheers!

Is/Does Paul Happy/Care? Paul Woodward, Astronomy, U. Minnesota documentation.

A Few Points to Ponder 1. Design of Volume Visualization −Exploration vs. Presentation? Avoid 3D! [Bordoloi & Shen, Vis 2005]

Interaction/Animation Harmful

A Few Points to Ponder 1. Design of Volume Visualization −Exploration vs. Presentation? Avoid 3D! −Simple, Concise, Clear Illustrators are paid to remove visual information – Patrick Lynch Clutter and Confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information – Edward Tufte

Image removed due to copyright concern

Respect Lines [Yuan & Chen, VisSym 2004]

A Few Points to Ponder 1. Design of Volume Visualization −Exploration vs. Presentation? Avoid 3D! −Simple, Concise, Clear −Small or large data

High Dynamic Range Volume Rendering [Yuan, Nguyen & Chen, Vis 05] 2048^3 homogenous decaying compressible fluid turbulence

A Few Points to Ponder 1. Design of Volume Visualization −Exploration vs. Presentation? Avoid 3D! −Simple, Concise, Clear −Small or large data −Visualization vs. InfoVis or Data mining or other data analysis

A Few Points to Ponder 2. Human-Visualization Interface −Virtual vs. Real/physical metaphor

A Few Points to Ponder 2. Human-Visualization Interface −Virtual vs. Real/physical metaphor −3D vs. 2D

Sketch-based Lighting Design [Shesh & Chen, 2005]

Sketch-based Lighting Design

Sketch-based Volume Cutout [Yuan, Zhang, Nguyen & Chen, 2005]

Sketch-based Volume Cutout

A Few Points to Ponder 3. Evaluation of Volume Visualization −Benchmarks (datasets, tasks, use case) −Based on perception and cognitive science −Demonstrated utility −Usability −Range of devices and network speed −Visual impairments −Range of cognitive skills −Novice users, etc. −Measuring insight/knowledge gained −Excellent discussions in [van Wijk, Vis 05]

Truth & beauty Image removed due to copyright concern