Interactive Tensor Field Visualization

University Of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project addresses a well-recognized research challenge in scientific visualization - how to visualize tensor fields. Tensor fields are prevalent in a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines such as fluid dynamics, mechanics, material science, and earth sciences, where they quantify the opposing forces on various materials. Tensor fields are particularly hard to visualize because of (a) the large number of variables (e.g. 9 for 3D second order tensors) and their interplay, and (b) the large data sets involved, particularly for time varying tensor fields. Currently, there are a very limited number of visualization methods for understanding tensors. This project will provide a suite of novel and intuitive visualization methods, based on deformation and intelligent agents, to help scientists and engineers interactively explore and understand the nature and structure of tensor fields. Conceptually, tensors exert force on the space around them. This project's approach is to allow the tensor field to manifest itself by deforming idealized elements representing that space. The goal is to do these deformations interactively so users can examine different regions and properties of the data that may be of interest. The project will explore different implementations of the deformations, as well as the use of different methods of tensor decomposition to create more intuitively meaningful deformations. The project will also investigate intelligent agents that will seek out features of interest in the tensor field, so that they may be better displayed. Ideas and methods from this project will be enabling technologies towards understanding fundamental problems throughout science and engineering, and will be tested against real data sets.