Designed especially for neurobiologists, FluoRender is an interactive tool for multi-channel fluorescence microscopy data visualization and analysis.
Deep brain stimulation
BrainStimulator is a set of networks that are used in SCIRun to perform simulations of brain stimulation such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and magnetic transcranial stimulation (TMS).
Developing software tools for science has always been a central vision of the SCI Institute.

Visualization

Visualization, sometimes referred to as visual data analysis, uses the graphical representation of data as a means of gaining understanding and insight into the data. Visualization research at SCI has focused on applications spanning computational fluid dynamics, medical imaging and analysis, biomedical data analysis, healthcare data analysis, weather data analysis, poetry, network and graph analysis, financial data analysis, etc.

Research involves novel algorithm and technique development to building tools and systems that assist in the comprehension of massive amounts of (scientific) data. We also research the process of creating successful visualizations.

We strongly believe in the role of interactivity in visual data analysis. Therefore, much of our research is concerned with creating visualizations that are intuitive to interact with and also render at interactive rates.

Visualization at SCI includes the academic subfields of Scientific Visualization, Information Visualization and Visual Analytics.


chuck

Charles Hansen

Volume Rendering
Ray Tracing
Graphics
pascucci

Valerio Pascucci

Topological Methods
Data Streaming
Big Data
chris

Chris Johnson

Scalar, Vector, and
Tensor Field Visualization,
Uncertainty Visualization
mike

Mike Kirby

Uncertainty Visualization
ross

Ross Whitaker

Topological Methods
Uncertainty Visualization
alex lex

Alex Lex

Information Visualization
bei

Bei Wang

Information Visualization
Scientific Visualization
Topological Data Analysis

Centers and Labs:


Funded Research Projects:


Publications in Visualization:


Topological and Statistical Methods for Complex Data,
Subtitled “Tackling Large-Scale, High-Dimensional, and Multivariate Data Spaces,” J. Bennett, F. Vivodtzev, V. Pascucci (Eds.). Mathematics and Visualization, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2015.
ISBN: 978-3-662-44899-1

This book contains papers presented at the Workshop on the Analysis of Large-scale,
High-Dimensional, and Multi-Variate Data Using Topology and Statistics, held in Le Barp,
France, June 2013. It features the work of some of the most prominent and recognized
leaders in the field who examine challenges as well as detail solutions to the analysis of
extreme scale data.
The book presents new methods that leverage the mutual strengths of both topological
and statistical techniques to support the management, analysis, and visualization
of complex data. It covers both theory and application and provides readers with an
overview of important key concepts and the latest research trends.
Coverage in the book includes multi-variate and/or high-dimensional analysis techniques,
feature-based statistical methods, combinatorial algorithms, scalable statistics algorithms,
scalar and vector field topology, and multi-scale representations. In addition, the book
details algorithms that are broadly applicable and can be used by application scientists to
glean insight from a wide range of complex data sets.



Guided visual exploration of genomic stratifications in cancer
M. Streit, A. Lex, S. Gratzl, C. Partl, D. Schmalstieg, H. Pfister, P. J. Park,, N. Gehlenborg. In Nature Methods, Vol. 11, No. 9, pp. 884--885. Sep, 2014.
ISSN: 1548-7091
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.3088



UpSet: Visualization of Intersecting Sets
A. Lex, N. Gehlenborg, H. Strobelt, R. Vuillemot,, H. Pfister. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (InfoVis '14), Vol. 20, No. 12, pp. 1983--1992. 2014.
ISSN: 1077-2626

Understanding relationships between sets is an important analysis task that has received widespread attention in the visualization community. The major challenge in this context is the combinatorial explosion of the number of set intersections if the number of sets exceeds a trivial threshold. In this paper we introduce UpSet, a novel visualization technique for the quantitative analysis of sets, their intersections, and aggregates of intersections. UpSet is focused on creating task-driven aggregates, communicating the size and properties of aggregates and intersections, and a duality between the visualization of the elements in a dataset and their set membership. UpSet visualizes set intersections in a matrix layout and introduces aggregates based on groupings and queries. The matrix layout enables the effective representation of associated data, such as the number of elements in the aggregates and intersections, as well as additional summary statistics derived from subset or element attributes. Sorting according to various measures enables a task-driven analysis of relevant intersections and aggregates. The elements represented in the sets and their associated attributes are visualized in a separate view. Queries based on containment in specific intersections, aggregates or driven by attribute filters are propagated between both views. We also introduce several advanced visual encodings and interaction methods to overcome the problems of varying scales and to address scalability. UpSet is web-based and open source. We demonstrate its general utility in multiple use cases from various domains.



ConTour: Data-Driven Exploration of Multi-Relational Datasets for Drug Discovery
Christian Partl, Alexander Lex, Marc Streit, Hendrik Strobelt, Anne-Mai Wasserman, Hanspeter Pfister,, Dieter Schmalstieg. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VAST '14), Vol. 20, No. 12, pp. 1883--1892. 2014.
ISSN: 1077-2626
DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2014.2346752

Large scale data analysis is nowadays a crucial part of drug discovery. Biologists and chemists need to quickly explore and evaluate potentially effective yet safe compounds based on many datasets that are in relationship with each other. However, there is a lack of tools that support them in these processes. To remedy this, we developed ConTour, an interactive visual analytics technique that enables the exploration of these complex, multi-relational datasets. At its core ConTour lists all items of each dataset in a column. Relationships between the columns are revealed through interaction: selecting one or multiple items in one column highlights and re-sorts the items in other columns. Filters based on relationships enable drilling down into the large data space. To identify interesting items in the first place, ConTour employs advanced sorting strategies, including strategies based on connectivity strength and uniqueness, as well as sorting based on item attributes. ConTour also introduces interactive nesting of columns, a powerful method to show the related items of a child column for each item in the parent column. Within the columns, ConTour shows rich attribute data about the items as well as information about the connection strengths to other datasets. Finally, ConTour provides a number of detail views, which can show items from multiple datasets and their associated data at the same time. We demonstrate the utility of our system in case studies conducted with a team of chemical biologists, who investigate the effects of chemical compounds on cells and need to understand the underlying mechanisms.



Domino: Extracting, Comparing, and Manipulating Subsets across Multiple Tabular Datasets
S. Gratzl, N. Gehlenborg, A. Lex, H. Pfister, M. Streit. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (InfoVis '14), Vol. 20, No. 12, pp. 2023--2032. 2014.
ISSN: 1077-2626
DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2014.2346260

Answering questions about complex issues often requires analysts to take into account information contained in multiple interconnected datasets. A common strategy in analyzing and visualizing large and heterogeneous data is dividing it into meaningful subsets. Interesting subsets can then be selected and the associated data and the relationships between the subsets visualized. However, neither the extraction and manipulation nor the comparison of subsets is well supported by state-of-the-art techniques. In this paper we present Domino, a novel multiform visualization technique for effectively representing subsets and the relationships between them. By providing comprehensive tools to arrange, combine, and extract subsets, Domino allows users to create both common visualization techniques and advanced visualizations tailored to specific use cases. In addition to the novel technique, we present an implementation that enables analysts to manage the wide range of options that our approach offers. Innovative interactive features such as placeholders and live previews support rapid creation of complex analysis setups. We introduce the technique and the implementation using a simple example and demonstrate scalability and effectiveness in a use case from the field of cancer genomics.



Show me the Invisible: Visualizing Hidden Content
T. Geymayer, M. Steinberger, A. Lex, M. Streit,, D. Schmalstieg. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14), CHI '14, ACM, pp. 3705--3714. 2014.
ISBN: 978-1-4503-2473-1
DOI: 10.1145/2556288.2557032

Content on computer screens is often inaccessible to users because it is hidden, e.g., occluded by other windows, outside the viewport, or overlooked. In search tasks, the efficient retrieval of sought content is important. Current software, however, only provides limited support to visualize hidden occurrences and rarely supports search synchronization crossing application boundaries. To remedy this situation, we introduce two novel visualization methods to guide users to hidden content. Our first method generates awareness for occluded or out-of-viewport content using see-through visualization. For content that is either outside the screen's viewport or for data sources not opened at all, our second method shows off-screen indicators and an on-demand smart preview. To reduce the chances of overlooking content, we use visual links, i.e., visible edges, to connect the visible content or the visible representations of the hidden content. We show the validity of our methods in a user study, which demonstrates that our technique enables a faster localization of hidden content compared to traditional search functionality and thereby assists users in information retrieval tasks.



Characterizing Cancer Subtypes using Dual Analysis in Caleydo
C. Turkay, A. Lex, M. Streit, H. Pfister,, H. Hauser. In IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 38--47. March, 2014.
ISSN: 0272-1716
DOI: 10.1109/MCG.2014.1

Dual analysis uses statistics to describe both the dimensions and rows of a high-dimensional dataset. Researchers have integrated it into StratomeX, a Caleydo view for cancer subtype analysis. In addition, significant-difference plots show the elements of a candidate subtype that differ significantly from other subtypes, thus letting analysts characterize subtypes. Analysts can also investigate how data samples relate to their assigned subtype and other groups. This approach lets them create well-defined subtypes based on statistical properties. Three case studies demonstrate the approach's utility, showing how it reproduced findings from a published subtype characterization.



Mu-8: Visualizing Differences between Proteins and their Families
J. Mercer, B. Pandian, A. Lex, N. Bonneel,, H. Pfister. In BMC Proceedings, Vol. 8, No. Suppl 2, pp. S5. Aug, 2014.
ISSN: 1753-6561
DOI: 10.1186/1753-6561-8-S2-S5

A complete understanding of the relationship between the amino acid sequence and resulting protein function remains an open problem in the biophysical sciences. Current approaches often rely on diagnosing functionally relevant mutations by determining whether an amino acid frequently occurs at a specific position within the protein family. However, these methods do not account for the biophysical properties and the 3D structure of the protein. We have developed an interactive visualization technique, Mu-8, that provides researchers with a holistic view of the differences of a selected protein with respect to a family of homologous proteins. Mu-8 helps to identify areas of the protein that exhibit: (1) significantly different bio-chemical characteristics, (2) relative conservation in the family, and (3) proximity to other regions that have suspect behavior in the folded protein.



Verifying Volume Rendering Using Discretization Error Analysis
T. Etiene, D. Jonsson, T. Ropinski, C. Scheidegger, J.L.D. Comba, L. G. Nonato, R. M. Kirby, A. Ynnerman,, C. T. Silva. In IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS, Vol. 20, No. 1, IEEE, pp. 140-154. January, 2014.

We propose an approach for verification of volume rendering correctness based on an analysis of the volume rendering integral, the basis of most DVR algorithms. With respect to the most common discretization of this continuous model (Riemann summation), we make assumptions about the impact of parameter changes on the rendered results and derive convergence curves describing the expected behavior. Specifically, we progressively refine the number of samples along the ray, the grid size, and the pixel size, and evaluate how the errors observed during refinement compare against the expected approximation errors. We derive the theoretical foundations of our verification approach, explain how to realize it in practice, and discuss its limitations. We also report the errors identified by our approach when applied to two publicly available volume rendering packages.



Curve Boxplot: Generalization of Boxplot for Ensembles of Curves
M. Mirzargar, R. Whitaker, R. M. Kirby. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 20, No. 12, IEEE, pp. 2654-63. December, 2014.

In simulation science, computational scientists often study the behavior of their simulations by repeated solutions with variations in parameters and/or boundary values or initial conditions. Through such simulation ensembles, one can try to understand or quantify the variability or uncertainty in a solution as a function of the various inputs or model assumptions. In response to a growing interest in simulation ensembles, the visualization community has developed a suite of methods for allowing users to observe and understand the properties of these ensembles in an efficient and effective manner. An important aspect of visualizing simulations is the analysis of derived features, often represented as points, surfaces, or curves. In this paper, we present a novel, nonparametric method for summarizing ensembles of 2D and 3D curves. We propose an extension of a method from descriptive statistics, data depth, to curves. We also demonstrate a set of rendering and visualization strategies for showing rank statistics of an ensemble of curves, which is a generalization of traditional whisker plots or boxplots to multidimensional curves. Results are presented for applications in neuroimaging, hurricane forecasting and fluid dynamics



RBF Volume Ray Casting on Multicore and Manycore CPUs
A. Knoll, I. Wald, P. Navratil, A. Bowen, K. Reda, M. E. Papka, K. Gaither. In Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 33, No. 3, Edited by H. Carr and P. Rheingans and H. Schumann, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 71--80. June, 2014.
DOI: 10.1111/cgf.12363

Modern supercomputers enable increasingly large N-body simulations using unstructured point data. The structures implied by these points can be reconstructed implicitly. Direct volume rendering of radial basis function (RBF) kernels in domain-space offers flexible classification and robust feature reconstruction, but achieving performant RBF volume rendering remains a challenge for existing methods on both CPUs and accelerators. In this paper, we present a fast CPU method for direct volume rendering of particle data with RBF kernels. We propose a novel two-pass algorithm: first sampling the RBF field using coherent bounding hierarchy traversal, then subsequently integrating samples along ray segments. Our approach performs interactively for a range of data sets from molecular dynamics and astrophysics up to 82 million particles. It does not rely on level of detail or subsampling, and offers better reconstruction quality than structured volume rendering of the same data, exhibiting comparable performance and requiring no additional preprocessing or memory footprint other than the BVH. Lastly, our technique enables multi-field, multi-material classification of particle data, providing better insight and analysis.



Approximating Local Homology from Samples
P. Skraba, Bei Wang. In Proceedings 25th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), pp. 174-192. 2014.

Recently, multi-scale notions of local homology (a variant of persistent homology) have been used to study the local structure of spaces around a given point from a point cloud sample. Current reconstruction guarantees rely on constructing embedded complexes which become diffcult to construct in higher dimensions. We show that the persistence diagrams used for estimating local homology can be approximated using families of Vietoris-Rips complexes, whose simpler construction are robust in any dimension. To the best of our knowledge, our results, for the first time make applications based on local homology, such as stratification learning, feasible in high dimensions.



Overview and State-of-the-Art of Uncertainty Visualization
G.P. Bonneau, H.C. Hege, C.R. Johnson, M.M. Oliveira, K. Potter, P. Rheingans, T. Schultz. In Scientific Visualization: Uncertainty, Multifield, Biomedical, and Scalable Visualization, Edited by M. Chen and H. Hagen and C.D. Hansen and C.R. Johnson and A. Kauffman, Springer-Verlag, pp. 3--27. 2014.
ISBN: 978-1-4471-6496-8
ISSN: 1612-3786
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-6497-5_1

The goal of visualization is to effectively and accurately communicate data. Visualization research has often overlooked the errors and uncertainty which accompany the scientific process and describe key characteristics used to fully understand the data. The lack of these representations can be attributed, in part, to the inherent difficulty in defining, characterizing, and controlling this uncertainty, and in part, to the difficulty in including additional visual metaphors in a well designed, potent display. However, the exclusion of this information cripples the use of visualization as a decision making tool due to the fact that the display is no longer a true representation of the data. This systematic omission of uncertainty commands fundamental research within the visualization community to address, integrate, and expect uncertainty information. In this chapter, we outline sources and models of uncertainty, give an overview of the state-of-the-art, provide general guidelines, outline small exemplary applications, and finally, discuss open problems in uncertainty visualization.



Data-Parallel Halo Finding with Variable Linking Lengths
W. Widanagamaachchi, P.-T. Bremer, C. Sewell, L.-T. Lo; J. Ahrens, V. Pascucci. In Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE 4th Symposium on Large Data Analysis and Visualization (LDAV), pp. 27--34. November, 2014.

State-of-the-art cosmological simulations regularly contain billions of particles, providing scientists the opportunity to study the evolution of the Universe in great detail. However, the rate at which these simulations generate data severely taxes existing analysis techniques. Therefore, developing new scalable alternatives is essential for continued scientific progress. Here, we present a dataparallel, friends-of-friends halo finding algorithm that provides unprecedented flexibility in the analysis by extracting multiple linking lengths. Even for a single linking length, it is as fast as the existing techniques, and is portable to multi-threaded many-core systems as well as co-processing resources. Our system is implemented using PISTON and is coupled to an interactive analysis environment used to study halos at different linking lengths and track their evolution over time.



Towards Paint and Click: Unified Interactions for Image Boundaries
SCI Technical Report, B. Summa, A.A. Gooch, G. Scorzelli, V. Pascucci. No. UUSCI-2014-004, SCI Institute, University of Utah, December, 2014.

Image boundaries are a fundamental component of many interactive digital photography techniques, enabling applications such as segmentation, panoramas, and seamless image composition. Interactions for image boundaries often rely on two complimentary but separate approaches: editing via painting or clicking constraints. In this work, we provide a novel, unified approach for interactive editing of pairwise image boundaries that combines the ease of painting with the direct control of constraints. Rather than a sequential coupling, this new formulation allows full use of both interactions simultaneously, giving users unprecedented flexibility for fast boundary editing. To enable this new approach, we provide technical advancements. In particular, we detail a reformulation of image boundaries as a problem of finding cycles, expanding and correcting limitations of the previous work. Our new formulation provides boundary solutions for painted regions with performance on par with state-of-the-art specialized, paint-only techniques. In addition, we provide instantaneous exploration of the boundary solution space with user constraints. Furthermore, we show how to increase performance and decrease memory consumption through novel strategies and/or optional approximations. Finally, we provide examples of common graphics applications impacted by our new approach.



In-situ feature extraction of large scale combustion simulations using segmented merge trees
A.G. Landge, V. Pascucci, A. Gyulassy, J.C. Bennett, H. Kolla, J. Chen, P.-T. Bremer. In Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2014), New Orleans, Louisana, IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, USA pp. 1020--1031. 2014.
ISBN: 978-1-4799-5500-8
DOI: 10.1109/SC.2014.88

The ever increasing amount of data generated by scientific simulations coupled with system I/O constraints are fueling a need for in-situ analysis techniques. Of particular interest are approaches that produce reduced data representations while maintaining the ability to redefine, extract, and study features in a post-process to obtain scientific insights.

This paper presents two variants of in-situ feature extraction techniques using segmented merge trees, which encode a wide range of threshold based features. The first approach is a fast, low communication cost technique that generates an exact solution but has limited scalability. The second is a scalable, local approximation that nevertheless is guaranteed to correctly extract all features up to a predefined size. We demonstrate both variants using some of the largest combustion simulations available on leadership class supercomputers. Our approach allows state-of-the-art, feature-based analysis to be performed in-situ at significantly higher frequency than currently possible and with negligible impact on the overall simulation runtime.



Efficient I/O and storage of adaptive-resolution data
S. Kumar, J. Edwards, P.-T. Bremer, A. Knoll, C. Christensen, V. Vishwanath, P. Carns, J.A. Schmidt, V. Pascucci. In Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, IEEE Press, pp. 413--423. 2014.
DOI: 10.1109/SC.2014.39

We present an efficient, flexible, adaptive-resolution I/O framework that is suitable for both uniform and Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) simulations. In an AMR setting, current solutions typically represent each resolution level as an independent grid which often results in inefficient storage and performance. Our technique coalesces domain data into a unified, multiresolution representation with fast, spatially aggregated I/O. Furthermore, our framework easily extends to importance-driven storage of uniform grids, for example, by storing regions of interest at full resolution and nonessential regions at lower resolution for visualization or analysis. Our framework, which is an extension of the PIDX framework, achieves state of the art disk usage and I/O performance regardless of resolution of the data, regions of interest, and the number of processes that generated the data. We demonstrate the scalability and efficiency of our framework using the Uintah and S3D large-scale combustion codes on the Mira and Edison supercomputers.



Robust Detection of Singularities in Vector Fields
H. Bhatia, A. Gyulassy, H. Wang, P.-T. Bremer, V. Pascucci . In Topological Methods in Data Analysis and Visualization III, Mathematics and Visualization, Springer International Publishing, pp. 3--18. March, 2014.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-04099-8_1

Recent advances in computational science enable the creation of massive datasets of ever increasing resolution and complexity. Dealing effectively with such data requires new analysis techniques that are provably robust and that generate reproducible results on any machine. In this context, combinatorial methods become particularly attractive, as they are not sensitive to numerical instabilities or the details of a particular implementation. We introduce a robust method for detecting singularities in vector fields. We establish, in combinatorial terms, necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a critical point in a cell of a simplicial mesh for a large class of interpolation functions. These conditions are entirely local and lead to a provably consistent and practical algorithm to identify cells containing singularities.



Scientific Visualization: Uncertainty, Multifield, Biomedical, and Scalable Visualization,
C.D. Hansen, M. Chen, C.R. Johnson, A.E. Kaufman, H. Hagen (Eds.). Mathematics and Visualization, Springer, 2014.
ISBN: 978-1-4471-6496-8



Surface boxplots
M.G. Genton, C.R. Johnson, K. Potter, G. Stenchikov, Y. Sun. In Stat Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1--11. 2014.

In this paper, we introduce a surface boxplot as a tool for visualization and exploratory analysis of samples of images. First, we use the notion of volume depth to order the images viewed as surfaces. In particular, we define the median image. We use an exact and fast algorithm for the ranking of the images. This allows us to detect potential outlying images that often contain interesting features not present in most of the images. Second, we build a graphical tool to visualize the surface boxplot and its various characteristics. A graph and histogram of the volume depth values allow us to identify images of interest. The code is available in the supporting information of this paper. We apply our surface boxplot to a sample of brain images and to a sample of climate model outputs.