131,042 research outputs found
The hunt for submarines in classical art: mappings between scientific invention and artistic interpretation
This is a report to the AHRC's ICT in Arts and Humanities Research Programme.
This report stems from a project which aimed to produce a series of mappings between advanced imaging information and communications technologies (ICT) and needs within visual arts research. A secondary aim was to demonstrate the feasibility of a structured approach to establishing such mappings.
The project was carried out over 2006, from January to December, by the visual arts centre of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS Visual Arts).1 It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as one of the Strategy Projects run under the aegis of its ICT in Arts and Humanities Research programme. The programme, which runs from October 2003 until September 2008, aims âto develop, promote and monitor the AHRCâs ICT strategy, and to build capacity nation-wide in the use of ICT for arts and humanities researchâ.2 As part of this, the Strategy Projects were intended to contribute to the programme in two ways: knowledge-gathering projects would inform the programmeâs Fundamental Strategic Review of ICT, conducted for the AHRC in the second half of 2006, focusing âon critical strategic issues such as e-science and peer-review of digital resourcesâ. Resource-development projects would âbuild tools and resources of broad relevance across the range of the AHRCâs academic subject disciplinesâ.3 This project fell into the knowledge-gathering strand.
The project ran under the leadership of Dr Mike Pringle, Director, AHDS Visual Arts, and the day-to-day management of Polly Christie, Projects Manager, AHDS Visual Arts. The research was carried out by Dr Rupert Shepherd
Cosmic cookery : making a stereoscopic 3D animated movie.
This paper describes our experience making a short stereoscopic movie visualizing the development of structure in
the universe during the 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to the present day. Aimed at a general audience for
the Royal Society's 2005 Summer Science Exhibition, the movie illustrates how the latest cosmological theories
based on dark matter and dark energy are capable of producing structures as complex as spiral galaxies and
allows the viewer to directly compare observations from the real universe with theoretical results. 3D is an
inherent feature of the cosmology data sets and stereoscopic visualization provides a natural way to present the
images to the viewer, in addition to allowing researchers to visualize these vast, complex data sets.
The presentation of the movie used passive, linearly polarized projection onto a 2m wide screen but it was
also required to playback on a Sharp RD3D display and in anaglyph projection at venues without dedicated
stereoscopic display equipment. Additionally lenticular prints were made from key images in the movie. We
discuss the following technical challenges during the stereoscopic production process; 1) Controlling the depth
presentation, 2) Editing the stereoscopic sequences, 3) Generating compressed movies in display speciÂŻc formats.
We conclude that the generation of high quality stereoscopic movie content using desktop tools and equipment
is feasible. This does require careful quality control and manual intervention but we believe these overheads
are worthwhile when presenting inherently 3D data as the result is signiÂŻcantly increased impact and better
understanding of complex 3D scenes
Using high resolution displays for high resolution cardiac data
The ability to perform fast, accurate, high resolution visualization is fundamental
to improving our understanding of anatomical data. As the volumes of data
increase from improvements in scanning technology, the methods applied to rendering
and visualization must evolve. In this paper we address the interactive display of
data from high resolution MRI scanning of a rabbit heart and subsequent histological
imaging. We describe a visualization environment involving a tiled LCD panel
display wall and associated software which provide an interactive and intuitive user
interface.
The oView software is an OpenGL application which is written for the VRJuggler
environment. This environment abstracts displays and devices away from the
application itself, aiding portability between different systems, from desktop PCs to
multi-tiled display walls. Portability between display walls has been demonstrated
through its use on walls at both Leeds and Oxford Universities. We discuss important
factors to be considered for interactive 2D display of large 3D datasets,
including the use of intuitive input devices and level of detail aspects
Space for Two to Think: Large, High-Resolution Displays for Co-located Collaborative Sensemaking
Large, high-resolution displays carry the potential to enhance single display groupware collaborative sensemaking for intelligence analysis tasks by providing space for common ground to develop, but it is up to the visual analytics tools to utilize this space effectively. In an exploratory study, we compared two tools (Jigsaw and a document viewer), which were adapted to support multiple input devices, to observe how the large display space was used in establishing and maintaining common ground during an intelligence analysis scenario using 50 textual documents. We discuss the spatial strategies employed by the pairs of participants, which were largely dependent on tool type (data-centric or function-centric), as well as how different visual analytics tools used collaboratively on large, high-resolution displays impact common ground in both process and solution. Using these findings, we suggest design considerations to enable future co-located collaborative sensemaking tools to take advantage of the benefits of collaborating on large, high-resolution displays
HOLOGRAPHICS: Combining Holograms with Interactive Computer Graphics
Among all imaging techniques that have been invented throughout the last decades, computer graphics is one of the most successful tools today. Many areas in science, entertainment, education, and engineering would be unimaginable without the aid of 2D or 3D computer graphics. The reason for this success story might be its interactivity, which is an important property that is still not provided efficiently by competing technologies â such as holography. While optical holography and digital holography are limited to presenting a non-interactive content, electroholography or computer generated holograms (CGH) facilitate the computer-based generation and display of holograms at interactive rates [2,3,29,30]. Holographic fringes can be computed by either rendering multiple perspective images, then combining them into a stereogram [4], or simulating the optical interference and calculating the interference pattern [5]. Once computed, such a system dynamically visualizes the fringes with a holographic display. Since creating an electrohologram requires processing, transmitting, and storing a massive amount of data, todayâs computer technology still sets the limits for electroholography. To overcome some of these performance issues, advanced reduction and compression methods have been developed that create truly interactive electroholograms. Unfortunately, most of these holograms are relatively small, low resolution, and cover only a small color spectrum. However, recent advances in consumer graphics hardware may reveal potential acceleration possibilities that can overcome these limitations [6]. In parallel to the development of computer graphics and despite their non-interactivity, optical and digital holography have created new fields, including interferometry, copy protection, data storage, holographic optical elements, and display holograms. Especially display holography has conquered several application domains. Museum exhibits often use optical holograms because they can present 3D objects with almost no loss in visual quality. In contrast to most stereoscopic or autostereoscopic graphics displays, holographic images can provide all depth cuesâperspective, binocular disparity, motion parallax, convergence, and accommodationâand theoretically can be viewed simultaneously from an unlimited number of positions. Displaying artifacts virtually removes the need to build physical replicas of the original objects. In addition, optical holograms can be used to make engineering, medical, dental, archaeological, and other recordingsâfor teaching, training, experimentation and documentation. Archaeologists, for example, use optical holograms to archive and investigate ancient artifacts [7,8]. Scientists can use hologram copies to perform their research without having access to the original artifacts or settling for inaccurate replicas. Optical holograms can store a massive amount of information on a thin holographic emulsion. This technology can record and reconstruct a 3D scene with almost no loss in quality. Natural color holographic silver halide emulsion with grain sizes of 8nm is todayâs state-of-the-art [14]. Today, computer graphics and raster displays offer a megapixel resolution and the interactive rendering of megabytes of data. Optical holograms, however, provide a terapixel resolution and are able to present an information content in the range of terabytes in real-time. Both are dimensions that will not be reached by computer graphics and conventional displays within the next years â even if Mooreâs law proves to hold in future. Obviously, one has to make a decision between interactivity and quality when choosing a display technology for a particular application. While some applications require high visual realism and real-time presentation (that cannot be provided by computer graphics), others depend on user interaction (which is not possible with optical and digital holograms). Consequently, holography and computer graphics are being used as tools to solve individual research, engineering, and presentation problems within several domains. Up until today, however, these tools have been applied separately. The intention of the project which is summarized in this chapter is to combine both technologies to create a powerful tool for science, industry and education. This has been referred to as HoloGraphics. Several possibilities have been investigated that allow merging computer generated graphics and holograms [1]. The goal is to combine the advantages of conventional holograms (i.e. extremely high visual quality and realism, support for all depth queues and for multiple observers at no computational cost, space efficiency, etc.) with the advantages of todayâs computer graphics capabilities (i.e. interactivity, real-time rendering, simulation and animation, stereoscopic and autostereoscopic presentation, etc.). The results of these investigations are presented in this chapter
Marine Heritage Monitoring with High Resolution Survey Tools: ScapaMAP 2001-2006
Archaeologically, marine sites can be just as significant as those on land. Until recently, however, they were not protected in the UK to the same degree, leading to degradation of sites; the difficulty of investigating such sites still makes it problematic and expensive to properly describe, schedule and monitor them. Use of conventional high-resolution survey tools in an archaeological context is changing the economic structure of such investigations however, and it is now possible to remotely but routinely monitor the state of submerged cultural artifacts. Use of such data to optimize expenditure of expensive and rare assets (e.g., divers and on-bottom dive time) is an added bonus. We present here the results of an investigation into methods for monitoring of marine heritage sites, using the remains of the Imperial German Navy (scuttled 1919) in Scapa Flow, Orkney as a case study. Using a baseline bathymetric survey in 2001 and a repeat bathymetric and volumetric survey in 2006, we illustrate the requirements for such surveys over and above normal hydrographic protocols and outline strategies for effective imaging of large wrecks. Suggested methods for manipulation of such data (including processing and visualization) are outlined, and we draw the distinction between products for scientific investigation and those for outreach and education, which have very different requirements. We then describe the use of backscatter and volumetric acoustic data in the investigation of wrecks, focusing on the extra information to be gained from them that is not evident in the traditional bathymetric DTM models or sounding point-cloud representations of data. Finally, we consider the utility of high-resolution survey as part of an integrated site management policy, with particular reference to the economics of marine heritage monitoring and preservation
Asynchronous displays for multi-UV search tasks
Synchronous video has long been the preferred mode for controlling remote robots with other modes such as asynchronous control only used when unavoidable as in the case of interplanetary robotics. We identify two basic problems for controlling multiple robots using synchronous displays: operator overload and information fusion. Synchronous displays from multiple robots can easily overwhelm an operator who must search video for targets. If targets are plentiful, the operator will likely miss targets that enter and leave unattended views while dealing with others that were noticed. The related fusion problem arises because robots' multiple fields of view may overlap forcing the operator to reconcile different views from different perspectives and form an awareness of the environment by "piecing them together". We have conducted a series of experiments investigating the suitability of asynchronous displays for multi-UV search. Our first experiments involved static panoramas in which operators selected locations at which robots halted and panned their camera to capture a record of what could be seen from that location. A subsequent experiment investigated the hypothesis that the relative performance of the panoramic display would improve as the number of robots was increased causing greater overload and fusion problems. In a subsequent Image Queue system we used automated path planning and also automated the selection of imagery for presentation by choosing a greedy selection of non-overlapping views. A fourth set of experiments used the SUAVE display, an asynchronous variant of the picture-in-picture technique for video from multiple UAVs. The panoramic displays which addressed only the overload problem led to performance similar to synchronous video while the Image Queue and SUAVE displays which addressed fusion as well led to improved performance on a number of measures. In this paper we will review our experiences in designing and testing asynchronous displays and discuss challenges to their use including tracking dynamic targets. © 2012 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc
Computational Statistics and Data Visualization
This book is the third volume of the Handbook of Computational Statistics and covers the field of Data Visualization. In line with the companion volumes, it contains a collection of chapters by experts in the field to present readers with an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the state of the art. Data Visualization is an active area of application and research and this is a good time to gather together a summary of current knowledge. Graphic displays are often very effective at communicating information. They are also very often not effective at communicating information. Two important reasons for this state of affairs are that graphics can be produced with a few clicks of the mouse without any thought, and that the design of graphics is not taken seriously in many scientific textbooks. Some people seem to think that preparing good graphics is just a matter of common sense (in which case their common sense cannot be in good shape) and others believe that preparing graphics is a low-level task, not appropriate for scientific attention. This volume of the Handbook of Computational Statistics takes graphics for Data Visualization seriously.Data Visualization, Exploratory Graphics.
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