Skip to main content
Log in

Analogy-based volume exploration using ellipsoidal Gaussian transfer functions

  • Regular Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Visualization Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Much effort has been made on multidimensional transfer function, which is designed for effective exploration of 3D scalar datasets. But now, existing solution for designing transfer function typically focuses on exploring volume independently without any prior knowledge. It remains, however, a big challenge for us to reuse the explored knowledge, experience and results in scientific visualization. In this paper, we present a novel technique that employs an analogy-based approach. It aims to facilitate automatic volume exploration for multiple datasets which may share common context or features. The kernel of our approach is using the template scheme. With the introduction of the Gaussian Mixture Model, we adopt this new scheme to modeling, designing and transferring—they are processed in the data histogram space. Then, we integrate this scheme into two-dimensional transfer function design. The result shows that the interesting features can easily be captured with little user workload after adopting our approach.

Graphical Abstract

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Akiba H, Fout N, Ma K (2006) Simultaneous classification of time-varying volume data based on the time histogram. In: Proceedings of IEEE/Eurographics Symposium on Visualization’06, pp 171–178

  • Correa C, Ma K (2008) Size-based transfer functions: a new volume exploration technique. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 14(6):1380–1387

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Correa C, Ma K (2009) The occlusion spectrum for volume visualization and classification. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 15(6):1465–1472

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dempster A, Laird N, Rubin D (1977) Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm. J R Stat Soc Ser B 39:1–38

  • Drori I, Cohen-Or D, Yeshurun H (2003) Fragment-based image completion. ACM Trans Gr 22(3):303–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fujishiro I, Azuma T, Takeshima Y (1999) Automating transfer function design for comprehensible volume rendering based on 3D field topology analysis. In: Proceedings of IEEE Visualization’99, pp 467–563

  • Gentner D, Holyoak K, Takeshima Y (1999) The analogical mind: perspectives from cognitive science. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Hertzmann A, Jacobs C, Oliver N, Curless B, Salesin D (2001) Image analogies. In: Proceedings of SIGGRAPH’01, Citeseer, pp 327–340

  • Jankun-Kelly T, Ma K (2001) A study of transfer function generation for time-varying volume data. In: Proceedings of Eurographics/IEEE TCVG workshop on volume graphics’01, pp 51–68

  • Kawamura T, Idomura Y, Miyamura H, Takemiya H (2017) Algebraic design of multi-dimensional transfer function using transfer function synthesizer. J Vis 20(1):151–162. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12650-016-0387-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kindlmann G, Durkin J (1998) Semi-automatic generation of transfer functions for direct volume rendering. In: Proceedings of IEEE symposium on volume visualization’98, pp 79–86

  • Kniss J, Kindlmann G, Hansen C (2001) Interactive volume rendering using multi-dimensional transfer functions and direct manipulation widgets. In: Proceedings of IEEE visualization’01, pp 255–262

  • Kniss J, Premoze S, Ikits M, Lefohn A, Hansen C, Praun E (2003) Gaussian transfer functions for multi-field volume visualization. In: Proceedings of IEEE Visualization’03, pp 65–72

  • Lee T, Shen H (2009) Visualization and exploration of temporal trend relationships in multivariate time-varying data. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 15(6):1359–1366

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levoy M (1988) Display of surfaces from volume data. IEEE Comput Gr Appl 8(3):29–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ma K (2003) Visualizing time-varying volume data. Comput Sci Eng 5:34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maciejewski R, Wu I, Chen W, Ebert D (2009) Structuring feature space: a non-parametric method for volumetric transfer function generation. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 15(6):1473–1480

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pfister H, Lorensen B, Bajaj C, Kindlmann G, Schroeder W, Avila L, Martin K, Machiraju R, Lee J (2001) The transfer function bake-off. IEEE Comput Gr Appl 21(3):16–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Press WH, Teukolsky SA, Vetterling WT, Flannery BP (1992) Numerical recipes in C: the art of scientific computing. IEEE Concurr 6(4):79

  • Sato Y, Westin C, Bhalerao A, Nakajima S, Shiraga N, Tamura S, Kikinis R (2000) Tissue classification based on 3D local intensity structures forvolume rendering. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 6(2):160–180

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scheidegger C, Vo H, Koop D, Freire J, Silva C (2007) Querying and creating visualizations by analogy. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 13(6):1560

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Selver M, Güzelis C (2009) Semiautomatic transfer function initialization for abdominal visualization using self-generating hierarchical radial basis function networks. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 15(3):395–409

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sfikas G, Constantinopoulos C, Likas A, Galatsanos N (2005) An analytic distance metric for Gaussian mixture models with application in image retrieval. In: Proceedings of artificial neural networks, pp 835–840

  • Shapira L, Shamir A, Cohen-Or D (2009) Image appearance exploration by model-based navigation. Comput Gr Forum, Wiley Online Libr 28:629–638

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tzeng F, Ma K (2004) A cluster-space visual interface for arbitrary dimensional classification of volume data. In: Proceedings of IEEE/Eurographics symposium on visualization’04, pp 17–24

  • Tzeng F, Ma K (2005) Intelligent feature extraction and tracking for visualizing large-scale 4d flow simulations. In: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM/IEEE conference on supercomputing, p 6

  • Tzeng F, Lum E, Ma K (2005) An intelligent system approach to higher-dimensional classification of volume data. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 11(3):273–284

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang L, Giesen J, McDonnell K, Zolliker P, Mueller K (2008) Color design for illustrative visualization. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 14(6):1739–1754

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang Y, Chen W, Shan G, Dong T, Chi X (2010) Volume exploration using ellipsoidal gaussian transfer functions. In: Visualization symposium (PacificVis), 2010 IEEE Pacific, IEEE, pp 25–32

  • Winston P (1980) Learning and reasoning by analogy. Commun ACM 23(12):689–703

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woodring J, Shen H (2009a) Multiscale time activity data exploration via temporal clustering visualization spreadsheet. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 15(1):123–137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woodring J, Shen HW (2009b) Semi-automatic time-series transfer functions via temporal clustering and sequencing. Comput Gr Forum 28(3):791–798

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang Z (1998) Determining the epipolar geometry and its uncertainty: a review. Int J Comput Vis 27(2):161–195

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou J, Takatsuka M (2009) Automatic transfer function generation using contour tree controlled residue flow model and color harmonics. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 15(6):1481–1488

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments. This work is supported by the Grants of NSFC (61772315, 61379091, 61402540, 61672538, 61332015 ), NSFC-Guangdong Joint Fund (U1501255), the National Key Research & Development Plan of China (2016YFB1001404), Science Challenge Project (No. TZ2016002), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (2016ZRE27617), and the Fundamental Research Funds of Shandong University.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fangfang Zhou.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bao, X., Wang, Y., Cheng, Z. et al. Analogy-based volume exploration using ellipsoidal Gaussian transfer functions. J Vis 21, 511–523 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12650-017-0461-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12650-017-0461-3

Keywords

Navigation