Volume Visualization






Interactive Exploration

Interactivity is the key to effective data visualization and exploration. In addition to parallel rendering and hardware acceleration, we have developed alternative visualization methods offering greater interactivity and explorability according to application requirements.

Publications:
A Hardware-Assisted Hybrid Rendering Technique for Interactive Volume Visualization, Brett Wilson and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of the Volume Visualization and Graphics Symposium 2002. [pdf]

Multiresolution View-Dependent Splat Based Volume Rendering of Large Irregular Data, Jeremy Meredith and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of Parallel and Large Data Visualization Symposium 2001. [pdf]

Interactive Exploration of Large 3D Unstructured-Grid Data, Kwan-Liu Ma, Scoott Leutenegger, and Dimitri Mavriplis, ICASE Report No. 96-63, October 1996. [ps]

Volume Seedlings, Michael Cohen, Jamie Painter, M. Mehta, and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of the 1992 ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics. [pdf]

Volume Seeds: An Interactive Volume Exploration Technique, Kwan-Liu Ma, Michael Cohen, and Jamie Painter, The Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation, Volume 2, Number 4, 1991. [pdf]






Classification and Segmentation

We have been developing both automatic and interactive classification and segmentation techniques for the visualization of medical and nondestructive testing applications. Many of our techniques employ technologies found in image processing, machine learning, and statistical analysis.

Publications:
A Cluster-Space Visual Interface for Arbitrary Dimensional Classification of Volume Data, Fan-Yin Tzeng and Kwan-Liu Ma, to appear in VisSym 2004, May 19-21.

A Novel Interface for Higher-Dimensional Classification of Volume Data, Fan-Yin Tzeng, Eric B. Lum, and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of the Visualization 2003 Conference. [pdf]

RGVis: Region Growing Based Visualization Techniques for Volume Visualization, Runzhen Huang and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of Pacific Graphics 2003 Conference. [pdf]

Visualizing Industrial CT Volume Data for Nondestructive Testing Applications, Runzhen Huang, Kwan-Liu Ma, Patrick McCormick, and William Ward, in Proceedings of the Visualization 2003 Conference. [pdf]

ISpace: Interactive Volume Data Classification Techniques Using Independent Component Analysis, Ikuko Takanashi, Eric Lum, Kwan-Liu Ma, and Shigeru Muraki, in Proceedings of the Pcific Graphics 2002 Conference. [pdf]

Segmentation and 3D Visualization of High-Resolution Human Brain Cryosections, Ikuko Takanashi, Eric Lum, Kwan-Liu Ma, Joerg Meyer, Bernd Hamann, and Art Olson, in Proceedings of the Visualization and Data Analysis 2002 Conference. [pdf]






Rendering

We have been studying how to generate and evaluate perceptually effective visualizations and high-fidelity visualizations. Hardware acceleration makes the rendering cost acceptable.

Publications:
High-Quality Lighting and Efficient Pre-Integration for Volume Rendering, Eric B. Lum, Brett Wilson, Kwan-Liu Ma. To appear in VisSym 2004. May 19-21. [pdf]

Hardware-Accelerated Parallel Non-Photorealistic Volume Rendering, Eric B. Lum and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of the Internatinoal Symposium on Nonphotorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2002). [pdf]

Feature-Enhanced Visualization of Multidimensional, Multivariate Volume Data using Non-Photorealistic Rendering Techniques, Aleksander Stompel, Eric B. Lum, and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of Pacific Graphics 2002 Conference. [pdf]









Irregular Grids

Visualizing volume data on an irregular grid (non-uniform rectilinear, curvilinear, unstructured, or AMR) requires additional processing and storage space. We have developed data organization, feature enhancement, and rendering techniques for more efficient visualization.

Publications:
Visualizing Large-Scale Earthquake Simulations, Kwan-Liu Ma, Aleksander Stompel, jacobo Bielak, Omar Ghattas, and Eui Joong Kim, in Proceedings of the Supercomputing 2003 Conference, November 15-21. [pdf]

Multiresolution View-Dependent Splat Based Volume Rendering of Large Irregular Data, Jeremy Meredith and Kwan-Liu Ma, Parallel and Large Data Visualization Symposium, October 22-23, 2001. [pdf]

Multi-threaded Rendering Unstructured-Grid Volume Data on the SGI Origin 2000, C. Hofsetz and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of 3rd Eurographics Workshop on Parallel Graphics and Visualization, Girona, EU, September 28-29, 2000.

Parallel Visualization of Large-Scale Aerodynamic Calculations: A Case Study on T3E, Kwan-Liu Ma and T. Crockett, in Proceedings of 1999 Parallel Visualization and Graphics Symposium, October 1999.

Parallel Rendering of 3D AMR Data on the SGI/Cray T3E, Kwan-Liu Ma, the 7th Symposium on the Frontiers of Massively Parallel Computation, Annapolis, Maryland, February 21-25, 1999.

Fast Retrieval of Disk-Resident Unstructured Volume Data for Visualization, Scott Leutenegger and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of the DIMACS Workshop on External Memory Algorithms and Visualization, Piscataway, NJ, May 20-22, 1998

Out-of-core Streamline Visualization on Large Unstructured Meshes, S.-K. Ueng, K. Sikorski, and Kwan-Liu Ma, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Volume 3 Number 4, December 1997

Extracting Features from 3D Unstructured Meshes for Interactive Visualization, Kwan-Liu Ma and Victoria Interrante, in Proceedings of the Visualization '97 Conference, October 1997, pp. 285-292

A Scalable, Cell-Projection Volume Rendering Algorithm for 3D Unstructured Data, Kwan-Liu Ma and Tom Crockett, in Proceedings of 1997 IEEE Symposium on Parallel Rendering, October 1997, pp. 95-104.

3D Shock Wave Visualization on Unstructured Grids, Kwan-Liu Ma, William Vermeer, and John Van Rosendale, in Proceedings of the 1996 Volume Visualization Symposium, October 1996

Efficient Streamline, Streamribbon, and Streamtube Constructions on Unstructured Grids, S.-K. Ueng, K. Sikorski, and Kwan-Liu Ma, EEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics , Volume 2, Number 2, June 1996, pp. 100-110.

Parallel Volume Ray-Casting for Unstructured-Grid Data on Distributed-Memory Architectures, Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of 1995 Parallel Rendering Symposium, October 30-31, 1995, pp. 23-30.

Fast Algorithms for Visualizing Fluid Motion in Steady Flow on Unstructured Grids, S.-K. Ueng, K. Sikorski, and Kwan-Liu Ma, in Proceedings of the Visualization '95 Conference, Octorber, pp. 313-320.