Notes from IEEE Visualization 2005 Course #6, Minneapolis, MN, October 25, 2005. Retrieved 3/16/2006 from http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~david/Papers/Viz05_Course6_Notes.pdf.Level set methods, an important class of partial differential equation
(PDE) methods, define dynamic surfaces implicitly as the level set (isosurface)
of a sampled, evolving nD function. This course is targeted for
researchers interested in learning about level set and other PDE-based
methods, and their application to visualization. The course material will
be presented by several of the recognized experts in the field, and will
include introductory concepts, practical considerations and extensive
details on a variety of level set/PDE applications.
The course will begin with preparatory material that introduces the
concept of using partial differential equations to solve problems in
visualization. This will include the structure and behavior of several
different types of differential equations, e.g. the level set, heat and
reaction-diffusion equations, as well as a general approach to developing
PDE-based applications. The second stage of the course will describe the
numerical methods and algorithms needed to implement the mathematics
and methods presented in the first stage, including information on
implementing the algorithms on GPUs. Throughout the course the
technical material will be tied to applications, e.g. image processing,
geometric modeling, dataset segmentation, model processing, surface
reconstruction, anisotropic geometric diffusion, flow field post-processing
and vector visualization.
Prerequisites:
Knowledge of calculus, linear algebra, computer graphics, visualization,
geometric modeling and computer vision. Some familiarity with
differential geometry, differential equations, numerical computing and
image processing is strongly recommended, but not required