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Feature tracking and viewing for time-varying data sets

Ji, Guangfeng

Abstract Details

2006, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Computer and Information Science.
Feature tracking plays an important role in understanding time-varying data sets since it allows scientists to focus on regions of interest and track their evolution and interaction over time. In this work, we first present an efficient algorithm to track time-varying isosurface and interval volume features using isosurfacing in higher dimensions. The algorithm extracts the correspondence directly from the higher dimensional geometry and allows more efficient feature tracking. We further show that the correspondence relationship for time-varying isosurfaces can be computed at a preprocessing stage. At run time, isosurface tracking can be efficiently performed by simple table lookup operations with minimal overhead. For complex data sets, the previous feature tracking methods cannot guarantee the globally best match. To amend the problem, we propose a novel global tracking technique to track features, which defines the globally best match as the one with a minimal overall matching cost. We also propose to use the Earth Mover's Distance as a better metric to measure the matching cost. An efficient branch-and-bound algorithm is presented to search the global minimal cost. In addition to tracking features, another important problem is how to view the time-varying features effectively. Due to the time-varying nature, animation remains the most general and common way to show how time-varying features evolve over time. A key issue of generating a good animation is to select ideal views through which the user can perceive the maximum information of the time-varying features. In this work, we first propose an improved view selection method for static data, which measures the quality of a static view by analyzing the opacity, color and curvature distributions of the feature rendering images from the given view. A dynamic programming approach is used to select dynamic views. The process maximizes the information perceived from the time-varying features based on the constraint that the view should show smooth changes of direction and near-constant speed. Our feature tracking and viewing algorithms provide the user with a more effective and efficient way to study the time-varying features, and allow the user to gain more insight into the time-varying data sets.
Han-Wei Shen (Advisor)

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ji, G. (2006). Feature tracking and viewing for time-varying data sets [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1148658139

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ji, Guangfeng. Feature tracking and viewing for time-varying data sets. 2006. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1148658139.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ji, Guangfeng. "Feature tracking and viewing for time-varying data sets." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1148658139

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)