Ubiquitous volume rendering in the web platform

176 p.The main thesis hypothesis is that ubiquitous volume rendering can be achieved using WebGL. The thesis enumerates the challenges that should be met to achieve that goal. The results allow web content developers the integration of interactive volume rendering within standard HTML5 web pages. Content developers only need to declare the X3D nodes that provide the rendering characteristics they desire. In contrast to the systems that provide specific GPU programs, the presented architecture creates automatically the GPU code required by the WebGL graphics pipeline. This code is generated directly from the X3D nodes declared in the virtual scene. Therefore, content developers do not need to know about the GPU.The thesis extends previous research on web compatible volume data structures for WebGL, ray-casting hybrid surface and volumetric rendering, progressive volume rendering and some specific problems related to the visualization of medical datasets. Finally, the thesis contributes to the X3D standard with some proposals to extend and improve the volume rendering component. The proposals are in an advance stage towards their acceptance by the Web3D Consortium

Ubiquitous volume rendering in the web platform

176 p.The main thesis hypothesis is that ubiquitous volume rendering can be achieved using WebGL. The thesis enumerates the challenges that should be met to achieve that goal. The results allow web content developers the integration of interactive volume rendering within standard HTML5 web pages. Content developers only need to declare the X3D nodes that provide the rendering characteristics they desire. In contrast to the systems that provide specific GPU programs, the presented architecture creates automatically the GPU code required by the WebGL graphics pipeline. This code is generated directly from the X3D nodes declared in the virtual scene. Therefore, content developers do not need to know about the GPU.The thesis extends previous research on web compatible volume data structures for WebGL, ray-casting hybrid surface and volumetric rendering, progressive volume rendering and some specific problems related to the visualization of medical datasets. Finally, the thesis contributes to the X3D standard with some proposals to extend and improve the volume rendering component. The proposals are in an advance stage towards their acceptance by the Web3D Consortium

Web based hybrid volumetric visualisation of urban GIS data: Integration of 4D Temperature and Wind Fields with LoD-2 CityGML models

City models visualisation, buildings, structures and volumetric information, is an important task in Computer Graphics and Urban Planning -- The different formats and data sources involved in the visualisation make the development of applications a big challenge -- We present a homogeneous web visualisation framework using X3DOM and MEDX3DOM for the visualisation of these urban objects -- We present an integration of different declarative data sources, enabling the utilization of advanced visualisation algorithms to render the models -- It has been tested with a city model composed of buildings from the Madrid University Campus, some volumetric datasets coming from Air Quality Models and 2D layers wind datasets -- Results show that the visualisation of all the urban models can be performed in real time on the Web -- An HTML5 web interface is presented to the users, enabling real time modifications of visualisation parameter

Visualisation of Large-Scale Call-Centre Data

The contact centre industry employs 4% of the entire United King-dom and United States’ working population and generates gigabytes of operational data that require analysis, to provide insight and to improve efficiency. This thesis is the result of a collaboration with QPC Limited who provide data collection and analysis products for call centres. They provided a large data-set featuring almost 5 million calls to be analysed. This thesis utilises novel visualisation techniques to create tools for the exploration of the large, complex call centre data-set and to facilitate unique observations into the data.A survey of information visualisation books is presented, provid-ing a thorough background of the field. Following this, a feature-rich application that visualises large call centre data sets using scatterplots that support millions of points is presented. The application utilises both the CPU and GPU acceleration for processing and filtering and is exhibited with millions of call events.This is expanded upon with the use of glyphs to depict agent behaviour in a call centre. A technique is developed to cluster over-lapping glyphs into a single parent glyph dependant on zoom level and a customizable distance metric. This hierarchical glyph repre-sents the mean value of all child agent glyphs, removing overlap and reducing visual clutter. A novel technique for visualising individually tailored glyphs using a Graphics Processing Unit is also presented, and demonstrated rendering over 100,000 glyphs at interactive frame rates. An open-source code example is provided for reproducibility.Finally, a novel interaction and layout method is introduced for improving the scalability of chord diagrams to visualise call transfers. An exploration of sketch-based methods for showing multiple links and direction is made, and a sketch-based brushing technique for filtering is proposed. Feedback from domain experts in the call centre industry is reported for all applications developed

A WebGL application based on BIM IFC

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como partes dos requisitos para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática, ramo de Computação MóvelThe possibility of displaying high performance 3D accelerated graphics in the browser is seen as an obstacle to the conversion of applications to the web. The release of WebGL made Web3D gain new strength to overcome that obstacle. Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) tools are a type of applications that could benefit with this advance. In the AEC industry, there is a standard candidate for Building Information Modelling (BIM), called Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). This data model promotes interoperability between AEC tools, giving a common format to the applications. This work comes from the need of redesigning a legacy application that allows the user to design, display and calculate building structures. Focusing on the displaying of building structures, this work merges IFC and WebGL into an application, to replicate in a modern way the legacy application capabilities. This is done by developing a server module that processes the IFC data model and a client module that displays that model in a WebGL environment. The result is a prototype web application capable of displaying 3D IFC building models in the browser without plug-ins. A possibilidade de visualização de gráficos acelerados 3D de alto desempenho no navegador ainda é visto como um obstáculo na migração de aplicações para a web. O lançamento do WebGL fez o Web3D ganhar uma nova força para superar esse obstáculo. As ferramentas de Arquitetura, Engenharia e Construção (AEC) são um tipo de aplicações que podem beneficiar com este avanço. Na indústria AEC, há um candidato a padrão para Building Information Modelling (BIM), chamado de Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). Este modelo de dados promove a interoperabilidade entre as ferramentas de AEC, fornecendo um formato comum às aplicações. Este trabalho surge da necessidade de redesenhar uma aplicação legada que permite ao o utilizador projetar, visualizar e calcular estruturas de edifícios. Focando na visualização de estruturas de edifícios, este trabalho funde o IFC e o WebGL numa aplicação, para replicar de forma moderna as capacidades da aplicação legada. Isto é feito através do desenvolvimento de um módulo de servidor que processa o modelo de dados IFC e um módulo de cliente que mostra esse modelo num ambiente WebGL. O resultado é um protótipo duma aplicação web capaz de visualizar modelos 3D de edifícios em formato IFC no browser sem plug-ins

A Hitchhiker's guide through the bio-image analysis software universe

Modern research in the life sciences is unthinkable without computational methods for extracting, quantifying and visualising information derived from microscopy imaging data of biological samples. In the past decade, we observed a dramatic increase in available software packages for these purposes. As it is increasingly difficult to keep track of the number of available image analysis platforms, tool collections, components and emerging technologies, we provide a conservative overview of software that we use in daily routine and give insights into emerging new tools. We give guidance on which aspects to consider when choosing the platform that best suits the user's needs, including aspects such as image data type, skills of the team, infrastructure and community at the institute and availability of time and budget.Peer reviewe

Molecular simulations and visualization: introduction and overview

Here we provide an introduction and overview of current progress in the field of molecular simulation and visualization, touching on the following topics: (1) virtual and augmented reality for immersive molecular simulations; (2) advanced visualization and visual analytic techniques; (3) new developments in high performance computing; and (4) applications and model building

Exploring and interrogating astrophysical data in virtual reality

Scientists across all disciplines increasingly rely on machine learning algorithms to analyse and sort datasets of ever increasing volume and complexity. Although trends and outliers are easily extracted, careful and close inspection will still be necessary to explore and disentangle detailed behaviour, as well as identify systematics and false positives. We must therefore incorporate new technologies to facilitate scientific analysis and exploration. Astrophysical data is inherently multi-parameter, with the spatial-kinematic dimensions at the core of observations and simulations. The arrival of mainstream virtual-reality (VR) headsets and increased GPU power, as well as the availability of versatile development tools for video games, has enabled scientists to deploy such technology to effectively interrogate and interact with complex data. In this paper we present development and results from custom-built interactive VR tools, called the iDaVIE suite, that are informed and driven by research on galaxy evolution, cosmic large-scale structure, galaxy–galaxy interactions, and gas/kinematics of nearby galaxies in survey and targeted observations. In the new era of Big Data ushered in by major facilities such as the SKA and LSST that render past analysis and refinement methods highly constrained, we believe that a paradigm shift to new software, technology and methods that exploit the power of visual perception, will play an increasingly important role in bridging the gap between statistical metrics and new discovery. We have released a beta version of the iDaVIE software system that is free and open to the community

Web-based Stereoscopic Collaboration for Medical Visualization

Medizinische Volumenvisualisierung ist ein wertvolles Werkzeug zur Betrachtung von Volumen- daten in der medizinischen Praxis und Lehre. Eine interaktive, stereoskopische und kollaborative Darstellung in Echtzeit ist notwendig, um die Daten vollständig und im Detail verstehen zu können. Solche Visualisierung von hochauflösenden Daten ist jedoch wegen hoher Hardware- Anforderungen fast nur an speziellen Visualisierungssystemen möglich. Remote-Visualisierung wird verwendet, um solche Visualisierung peripher nutzen zu können. Dies benötigt jedoch fast immer komplexe Software-Deployments, wodurch eine universelle ad-hoc Nutzbarkeit erschwert wird. Aus diesem Sachverhalt ergibt sich folgende Hypothese: Ein hoch performantes Remote- Visualisierungssystem, welches für Stereoskopie und einfache Benutzbarkeit spezialisiert ist, kann für interaktive, stereoskopische und kollaborative medizinische Volumenvisualisierung genutzt werden. Die neueste Literatur über Remote-Visualisierung beschreibt Anwendungen, welche nur reine Webbrowser benötigen. Allerdings wird bei diesen kein besonderer Schwerpunkt auf die perfor- mante Nutzbarkeit von jedem Teilnehmer gesetzt, noch die notwendige Funktion bereitgestellt, um mehrere stereoskopische Präsentationssysteme zu bedienen. Durch die Bekanntheit von Web- browsern, deren einfach Nutzbarkeit und weite Verbreitung hat sich folgende spezifische Frage ergeben: Können wir ein System entwickeln, welches alle Aspekte unterstützt, aber nur einen reinen Webbrowser ohne zusätzliche Software als Client benötigt? Ein Proof of Concept wurde durchgeführt um die Hypothese zu verifizieren. Dazu gehörte eine Prototyp-Entwicklung, deren praktische Anwendung, deren Performanzmessung und -vergleich. Der resultierende Prototyp (CoWebViz) ist eines der ersten Webbrowser basierten Systeme, welches flüssige und interaktive Remote-Visualisierung in Realzeit und ohne zusätzliche Soft- ware ermöglicht. Tests und Vergleiche zeigen, dass der Ansatz eine bessere Performanz hat als andere ähnliche getestete Systeme. Die simultane Nutzung verschiedener stereoskopischer Präsen- tationssysteme mit so einem einfachen Remote-Visualisierungssystem ist zur Zeit einzigartig. Die Nutzung für die normalerweise sehr ressourcen-intensive stereoskopische und kollaborative Anatomieausbildung, gemeinsam mit interkontinentalen Teilnehmern, zeigt die Machbarkeit und den vereinfachenden Charakter des Ansatzes. Die Machbarkeit des Ansatzes wurde auch durch die erfolgreiche Nutzung für andere Anwendungsfälle gezeigt, wie z.B. im Grid-computing und in der Chirurgie