Perceptually Optimized Rendering for Dynamic 3D Visualization

Funding Agency: Science Foundation Ireland

Programme: SFI Research Frontiers Program 2008

Project ID: SFI 08/RFP/CMS1076

Duration: August 2008 - July 2012

Person Months: 60

Researchers: John Dingliana (PI) [URL], Niall Redmond [URL], Andrew Corcoran [LinkedIn]

Research Center: GV2: Graphics Vision and Visualisation Group, Intelligent Systems Laboratory, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin

Introduction

click for larger image


This project addresses the problem of effective interactive visualization of highly complex dynamic 3D geometric data, including but not limited to high-resolution volumetric data, highly tessellated surface mesh or point-clouds obtained from 3D scanners. In particular, we are concerned with the issue of visualizing dynamic data whilst it undergoes change. Naïve renderings of complex volumetric data often have a tendency to inflict “information overload” on the user due to too much visual data being presented at once, which is exacerbated when the data is dynamic. Our solution will draw on previous research from perception, volume rendering and non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) literature and combine it with previously explored strategies in interaction design towards a system which is perceptually optimized for interactive visualization.


Main contributions

  • An enhanced rendering pipeline combining direct volume rendering (DVR) of data using traditional techniques with a perceptually optimized object-space NPR overlay, which enhances recognition, search and understanding of shape properties with particular emphasis on dynamically evolving data.
  • Adaptive abstraction techniques designed for perceptually optimized renderings.
  • GPU and multi-core optimizations of various pipeline stages to achieve realtime/ interactive visualization.
  • Direct application of our technique to 4D visualization of medical data sets.
  • Perceptual user tests to validate and inform the optimal choice of metrics and optimizations.

Publications

Real-time Illumination for Two-Level Volume Rendering
Corcoran, A. and Dingliana, J. in Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Visual Computing, ISVC 2012, Rethymnon, Crete, Greece, July 16 - 18, 2012 (to appear).

Image-space Adaptive Volume Rendering
Corcoran, A. and Dingliana, J. in proceedings of the Conference on Visualisation and Data Analysis VDA 2012, Burlingame, CA, USA - (Part of IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging 2012 Conference), January 2012

Time-Critical Ray-Cast Direct Volume Rendering
Corcoran, A. Redmond, N. and Dingliana, J., Technical Report TCD-CS-2011-13, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, September 2011. [Link: PDF]

Influencing User Perception Using Real-Time Adaptive Abstraction
Redmond, N., Ph.D. Thesis, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, September 2010. [Link: PDF]

Perceptual Enhancement of Two-level Volume Rendering
Corcoran, A. Redmond, N. and Dingliana, J., Computers & Graphics - An International Journal of Systems & Applications in Computer Graphics : Special Issue on Illustrative Visualisation, 2010 (In Press) [Link: DOI]

Perceptually Optimised Non-Photorealistic Rendering of Biological and Medical Volume Data
Corcoran, A. Redmond, N. and Dingliana, J., Poster in VCBM 2010: 2nd Eurographics Workshop on Visual Computing for Biology and Medicine, July 2010

Evaluating Stylistic Enhancement of Two-Level Volume Data
Redmond, N. Corcoran, A. and Dingliana, J., Poster in CAe 2010: 6th International Symposium on Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization, and Imaging. June 2010

A Hybrid Approach to Real-Time Abstraction
Redmond, N. and Dingliana, J. in Proceedings of Eurographics Ireland 2009. Dublin, Ireland. December 2009. [Pre-print TR-TCD-CS2009-18:PDF]

Investigating the effect of real-time stylisation techniques on user task performance
Redmond, N. and Dingliana J. in Proceedings of the 6th Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization. Chania, Crete, Greece. p121 - 124. September, 2009 [Link: ACM DOI]

Line Drawing Enhancement of Volume Rendering
Corcoran, A. and Dingliana, J. Poster in International Symposium on Non-photorealistic Animation and Rendering NPAR2009, Los Angeles, CA, USA, August 1-2, 2009, 2009

Influencing User Attention Using Real-Time Stylised Rendering,
Redmond, N. and Dingliana J. In TPCG 2009: Proceedings of Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics Conference, Cardiff, UK 17-19 June, edited by Wen Tang and John Collomosse, 2009 [Pre-print submitted version: PDF]

Evaluation of Non-Photorealistic Abstraction Techniques in Influencing User Behaviour
Redmond, N. and Dingliana, J. Poster in Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualisation (APGV '08), Los Angeles, CA, USA, 9-10 August, 2008, edited by S. Creem-Regehr and K. Myszkowski , ACM Press, 2008

Sample Images

click for larger image click for larger image click for larger image click for larger image
  Copyright © 2009 John Dingliana