Inviwo -- A Visualization System with Usage Abstraction Levels

The complexity of today's visualization applications demands specific visualization systems tailored for the development of these applications. Frequently, such systems utilize levels of abstraction to improve the application development process, for instance by providing a data flow network editor. Unfortunately, these abstractions result in several issues, which need to be circumvented through an abstraction-centered system design. Often, a high level of abstraction hides low level details, which makes it difficult to directly access the underlying computing platform, which would be important to achieve an optimal performance. Therefore, we propose a layer structure developed for modern and sustainable visualization systems allowing developers to interact with all contained abstraction levels. We refer to this interaction capabilities as usage abstraction levels, since we target application developers with various levels of experience. We formulate the requirements for such a system, derive the desired architecture, and present how the concepts have been exemplary realized within the Inviwo visualization system. Furthermore, we address several specific challenges that arise during the realization of such a layered architecture, such as communication between different computing platforms, performance centered encapsulation, as well as layer-independent development by supporting cross layer documentation and debugging capabilities

Anthrax outbreak in a Swedish beef cattle herd - 1st case in 27 years: Case report

After 27 years with no detected cases, an outbreak of anthrax occurred in a beef cattle herd in the south of Sweden. The outbreak was unusual as it occurred in winter, in animals not exposed to meat-and-bone meal, in a non-endemic country

Ultrasound Surface Extraction for Advanced Skin Rendering

This report evaluates possibilities to combine volumetric ultrasound (us) data together with the recent work published on advanced skin rendering techniques. We focus mainly on how to filter us data and localize surfaces within us data. We also evaluate recent skin rendering techniques in order to have a good understanding of what is needed from the us for rendering realistic skin. us data is acquired using sonography and have a low signal-to-noise ratio by nature, this makes it harder to extract surfaces compared to other medical data acquisition methods such as ct and mr. This report present an algorithm which implements a variational classification technique to emphasize surfaces within us and using a rbf network to fit an implicit function to these surfaces. Using this approach presented we have successfully extract smooth meshes from the noisy us data

Ultrasound Surface Extraction for Advanced Skin Rendering

This report evaluates possibilities to combine volumetric ultrasound (us) data together with the recent work published on advanced skin rendering techniques. We focus mainly on how to filter us data and localize surfaces within us data. We also evaluate recent skin rendering techniques in order to have a good understanding of what is needed from the us for rendering realistic skin. us data is acquired using sonography and have a low signal-to-noise ratio by nature, this makes it harder to extract surfaces compared to other medical data acquisition methods such as ct and mr. This report present an algorithm which implements a variational classification technique to emphasize surfaces within us and using a rbf network to fit an implicit function to these surfaces. Using this approach presented we have successfully extract smooth meshes from the noisy us data

Rendering Methods for 3D Fractals

3D fractals can be visualized as 3D objects with complex structure and has unlimited details. This thesis will be about methods to render 3D fractals effectively and efficiently, both to explore it in real-time and to create beautiful high resolution images with high details. The methods discussed is direct volume rendering with ray-casting and cut plane rendering to explore the fractal and an approach that uses super sampling to create high resolution images. Stereoscopic rendering is discussed and how it enhance the visual perception of the fracta

Ultrasound Surface Extraction Using Radial Basis Functions

Data acquired from ultrasound examinations is of interest not only for the physician, but also for the patient. While the physician uses the ultrasound data for diagnostic purposes the patient might be more interested in beautiful images in the case of prenatal imaging. Ultrasound data is noisy by nature and visually compelling 3D renderings are not always trivial to produce. This paper presents a technique which enables extraction of a smooth surface mesh from the ultrasound data by combining previous research in ultrasound processing with research in point cloud surface reconstruction. After filtering the ultrasound data using Variational Classification we extract a set of surface points. This set of points is then used to train an Adaptive Compactly Supported Radial Basis Functions system, a technique for surface reconstruction of noisy laser scan data. The resulting technique can be used to extract surfaces with adjustable smoothness and resolution and has been tested on various ultrasound datasets

Leadership in a Digital Transformation : An Exploratory Interview Study on How Managers Could Promote Employee Resilience

All managers are likely to experience situations where their employees encounter setbacks and challenges. How individuals respond to workplace setbacks or challenges is going to be determined by their level of resilience. Resilient employees are likely to take charge and bring about change, making them highly desirable in a business environment characterized by digital transformation and continuous change. Despite this, there is scarce research on how employee resilience could be promoted by managers. Therefore, this study targets that gap by exploring how the leadership dimensions individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation could promote employee resilience. Utilizing a sample of 10 employees who were currently undergoing a digital transformation, an exploratory interview study was conducted to capture the experience of employees. An abductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the findings, meaning that our theoretical framework played a guiding role in coding and thematic development. The findings showed that individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation were both important to promote employee resilience. However, the presence of individualized consideration was found to be necessary for intellectual stimulation to promote employee resilience. Thus, it was concluded that managers need to primarily focus on individualized consideration prior to engaging in intellectual stimulation to create a strong foundation for a change process

Leadership in a Digital Transformation : An Exploratory Interview Study on How Managers Could Promote Employee Resilience

All managers are likely to experience situations where their employees encounter setbacks and challenges. How individuals respond to workplace setbacks or challenges is going to be determined by their level of resilience. Resilient employees are likely to take charge and bring about change, making them highly desirable in a business environment characterized by digital transformation and continuous change. Despite this, there is scarce research on how employee resilience could be promoted by managers. Therefore, this study targets that gap by exploring how the leadership dimensions individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation could promote employee resilience. Utilizing a sample of 10 employees who were currently undergoing a digital transformation, an exploratory interview study was conducted to capture the experience of employees. An abductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the findings, meaning that our theoretical framework played a guiding role in coding and thematic development. The findings showed that individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation were both important to promote employee resilience. However, the presence of individualized consideration was found to be necessary for intellectual stimulation to promote employee resilience. Thus, it was concluded that managers need to primarily focus on individualized consideration prior to engaging in intellectual stimulation to create a strong foundation for a change process

Coronapandemins påverkan på en idrottsklubbs relation med sina supportrar : En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av Luleå Hockeys relationsbyggande kommunikation på Instagram före och under coronapandemin

The main purpose of the study was to analyze and investigate the possible impact of the corona pandemic on a sport club´s external relationship-building communication on Instagram. The corona pandemic, and the audience restrictions it has brought, have meant that most sport clubs have been forced to create and maintain their relationships with their supporters in other ways than through the traditional arena experience. Several scholars suggest that social media has become an excellent platform for sport clubs to strengthen their relationship with their supporters. The method used was a qualitative content analysis of 60 Instagram posts. 30 of those posts where published before the pandemic and 30 during the pandemic. The theoretical framework consisted of relationship marketing and based on a version of Matthew Miles and Michael Huberman’s three-step process this study seeks to understand the possible difference between the relationship-building Instagram posts under a period before and during the pandemic. Based on our problem statement the findings show that Luleå Hockeys communication on Instagram, both during the analyzed periods in October 2019 and December 2020, overall was on monetary and social level. The findings also suggest that Luleå Hockey mainly used informing, sales, community and personal themes in their relationship-building communication during these months. In conclusion, the result of the study could not show that the corona pandemic had any significant effect on Luleå Hockeys external relationship-building communication on Instagram during the analyzed periods

A Crowdsourcing System for Integrated and Reproducible Evaluation in Scientific Visualization

User evaluations have gained increasing importance in visualization research over the past years, as in many cases these evaluations are the only way to support the claims made by visualization researchers. Unfortunately, recent literature reviews show that in comparison to algorithmic performance evaluations, the number of user evaluations is still very low. Reasons for this are the required amount of time to conduct such studies together with the difficulties involved in participant recruitment and result reporting. While it could be shown that the quality of evaluation results and the simplified participant recruitment of crowdsourcing platforms makes this technology a viable alternative to lab experiments when evaluating visualizations, the time for conducting and reporting such evaluations is still very high. In this paper, we propose a software system, which integrates the conduction, the analysis and the reporting of crowdsourced user evaluations directly into the scientific visualization development process. With the proposed system, researchers can conduct and analyze quantitative evaluations on a large scale through an evaluation-centric user interface with only a few mouse clicks. Thus, it becomes possible to perform iterative evaluations during algorithm design, which potentially leads to better results, as compared to the time consuming user evaluations traditionally conducted at the end of the design process. Furthermore, the system is built around a centralized database, which supports an easy reuse of old evaluation designs and the reproduction of old evaluations with new or additional stimuli, which are both driving challenges in scientific visualization research. We will describe the system's design and the considerations made during the design process, and demonstrate the system by conducting three user evaluations, all of which have been published before in the visualization literature