36-Issue 3
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Item Adaptable Radial Axes Plots for Improved Multivariate Data Visualization(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Rubio-Sánchez, Manuel; Sanchez, Alberto; Lehmann, Dirk J.; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeRadial axes plots are multivariate visualization techniques that extend scatterplots in order to represent high-dimensional data as points on an observable display. Well-known methods include star coordinates or principal component biplots, which represent data attributes as vectors that de ne axes, and produce linear dimensionality reduction mappings. In this paper we propose a hybrid approach that bridges the gap between star coordinates and principal component biplots, which we denominate adaptable radial axes plots . It is based on solving convex optimization problems where users can: (a) update the axis vectors interactively, as in star coordinates, while producing mappings that enable to estimate attribute values optimally through labeled axes, similarly to principal component biplots; (b) use different norms in order to explore additional nonlinear mappings of the data; and (c) include weights and constraints in the optimization problems for sorting the data along one axis. The result is a exible technique that complements, extends, and enhances current radial methods for data analysis.Item GraSp: Combining Spatially-aware Mobile Devices and a Display Wall for Graph Visualization and Interaction(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Kister, Ulrike; Klamka, Konstantin; Tominski, Christian; Dachselt, Raimund; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeGoing beyond established desktop interfaces, researchers have begun re-thinking visualization approaches to make use of alternative display environments and more natural interaction modalities. In this paper, we investigate how spatially-aware mobile displays and a large display wall can be coupled to support graph visualization and interaction. For that purpose, we distribute typical visualization views of classic node-link and matrix representations between displays. The focus of our work lies in novel interaction techniques that enable users to work with personal mobile devices in combination with the wall. We devised and implemented a comprehensive interaction repertoire that supports basic and advanced graph exploration and manipulation tasks, including selection, details-on-demand, focus transitions, interactive lenses, and data editing. A qualitative study has been conducted to identify strengths and weaknesses of our techniques. Feedback showed that combining mobile devices and a wall-sized display is useful for diverse graph-related tasks. We also gained valuable insights regarding the distribution of visualization views and interactive tools among the combined displays.Item Compactly Supported Biorthogonal Wavelet Bases on the Body Centered Cubic Lattice(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Horacsek, Joshua J.; Alim, Usman R.; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeIn this work, we present a family of compact, biorthogonal wavelet filter banks that are applicable to the Body Centered Cubic (BCC) lattice. While the BCC lattice has been shown to have superior approximation properties for volumetric data when compared to the Cartesian Cubic (CC) lattice, there has been little work in the way of designing wavelet filter banks that respect the geometry of the BCC lattice. Since wavelets have applications in signal de-noising, compression, and sparse signal reconstruction, these filter banks are an important tool that addresses some of the scalability concerns presented by the BCC lattice. We use these filters in the context of volumetric data compression and reconstruction and qualitatively evaluate our results by rendering images of isosurfaces from compressed data.Item An Empirical Study on the Reliability of Perceiving Correlation Indices using Scatterplots(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Sher, Varshita; Bemis, Karen G.; Liccardi, Ilaria; Chen, Min; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeScatterplots have been in use for about two centuries, primarily for observing the relationship between two variables and commonly for supporting correlation analysis. In this paper, we report an empirical study that examines how humans' perception of correlation using scatterplots relates to the Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient (PPMCC) - a commonly used statistical measure of correlation. In particular, we study human participants' estimation of correlation under different conditions, e.g., different PPMCC values, different densities of data points, different levels of symmetry of data enclosures, and different patterns of data distribution. As the participants were instructed to estimate the PPMCC of each stimulus scatterplot, the difference between the estimated and actual PPMCC is referred to as an offset. The results of the study show that varying PPMCC values, symmetry of data enclosure, or data distribution does have an impact on the average offsets, while only large variations in density cause an impact that is statistically significant. This study indicates that humans' perception of correlation using scatterplots does not correlate with computed PPMCC in a consistent manner. The magnitude of offsets may be affected not only by the difference between individuals, but also by geometric features of data enclosures. It suggests that visualizing scatterplots does not provide adequate support to the task of retrieving their corresponding PPMCC indicators, while the underlying model of humans' perception of correlation using scatterplots ought to feature other variables in addition to PPMCC. The paper also includes a theoretical discussion on the cost-benefit of using scatterplots.Item Visual Verification of Cancer Staging for Therapy Decision Support(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Cypko, Mario A.; Wojdziak, Jan; Stoehr, Matthaeus; Kirchner, Bettina; Preim, Bernhard; Dietz, Andreas; Lemke, Heinz U.; Oeltze-Jafra, Steffen; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeIt is generally accepted practice that each cancer patient case should be discussed in a clinical expert meeting, the so-called tumor board. A central role in finding the best therapy options for patients with solid tumors plays the Tumor, lymph Node, and Metastasis staging (TNM staging). Correctness of TNM staging has a significant impact on the therapy choice and hence on the patient's post-therapeutic quality of life or even survival. If inconsistencies in the TNM staging occur, possible explanations and solutions must be found based on the complex patient records, which takes the costly time of (multiple) physicians. We propose a more efficient visual analysis component, which supports a physician in verifying the given TNM staging before forwarding it to the tumor board. Our component comprises a Bayesian network model of the TNM staging process. Using information from the patient records and Bayesian inference, the models computes a patient-specific TNM staging, which is then explored and compared to the given staging by means of a graph-based visualization. Our component is implemented in a research prototype that supports an understanding of the model computations, allows for a fast identification of important influencing factors, and facilitates a quick detection of differences between two TNM stagings. We evaluated our component with five physicians, each studying 20 cases of laryngeal cancer.Item Illustrative Visualization of Mesoscale Ocean Eddies(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Liu, Li; Silver, Deborah; Bemis, Karen; Kang, Dujuan; Curchitser, Enrique; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeFeature-based time-varying volume visualization is combined with illustrative visualization to tell the story of how mesoscale ocean eddies form in the Gulf Stream and transport heat and nutrients across the ocean basin. The internal structure of these three-dimensional eddies and the kinematics with which they move are critical to a full understanding of ocean eddies. In this work, we apply a feature-based method to track instances of ocean eddies through the time steps of a high-resolution multidecadal regional ocean model and generate a series of eddy paths which reflect the life cycle of individual eddy instances. Based on the computed metadata, several important geometric and physical properties of eddy are computed. Illustrative visualization techniques, including visual effectiveness enhancement, focus+context, and smart visibility, are combined with the extracted volume features to explore eddy characteristics at different levels. An evaluation by domain experts indicates that combining our feature-based techniques with illustrative visualization techniques provides an insight into the role eddies play in ocean circulation. The domain experts expressed a preference for our methods over existing tools.Item EuroVis 2017: Frontmatter(Eurographics Association, 2017) Heer, Jeffrey; Ropinski, Timo; van Wijk, Jarke;Item Visualizing a Sequence of a Thousand Graphs (or Even More)(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Burch, Michael; Hlawatsch, Marcel; Weiskopf, Daniel; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeThe visualization of dynamic graphs demands visually encoding at least three major data dimensions: vertices, edges, and time steps. Many of the state-of-the-art techniques can show an overview of vertices and edges but lack a data-scalable visual representation of the time aspect. In this paper, we address the problem of displaying dynamic graphs with a thousand or more time steps. Our proposed interleaved parallel edge splatting technique uses a time-to-space mapping and shows the complete dynamic graph in a static visualization. It provides an overview of all data dimensions, allowing for visually detecting timevarying data patterns; hence, it serves as a starting point for further data exploration. By applying clustering and ordering techniques on the vertices, edge splatting on the links, and a dense time-to-space mapping, our approach becomes visually scalable in all three dynamic graph data dimensions. We illustrate the usefulness of our technique by applying it to call graphs and US domestic flight data with several hundred vertices, several thousand edges, and more than a thousand time steps.Item Visual Exploration of Global Trade Networks with Time-Dependent and Weighted Hierarchical Edge Bundles on GPU(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Hofmann, Johannes; Größler, Michael; Rubio-Sánchez, Manuel; Pichler, Peter-Paul; Lehmann, Dirk J.; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeThe UN Comtrade database is the world's largest repository of bilateral trade data. Their complexity poses a challenge to visualization systems, leading to issues such as scalability and visual clutter. Thus, we propose a radial layout-based visual exploration system to enable the user to smoothly explore the change over time and to explore different commodity classes at once by using a novel edge bundling concept. We evaluated our system with the aid of a group of domain experts.Item Interactive Regression Lens for Exploring Scatter Plots(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Shao, Lin; Mahajan, Aishwarya; Schreck, Tobias; Lehmann, Dirk J.; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeData analysis often involves finding models that can explain patterns in data, and reduce possibly large data sets to more compact model-based representations. In Statistics, many methods are available to compute model information. Among others, regression models are widely used to explain data. However, regression analysis typically searches for the best model based on the global distribution of data. On the other hand, a data set may be partitioned into subsets, each requiring individual models. While automatic data subsetting methods exist, these often require parameters or domain knowledge to work with. We propose a system for visual-interactive regression analysis for scatter plot data, supporting both global and local regression modeling. We introduce a novel regression lens concept, allowing a user to interactively select a portion of data, on which regression analysis is run in interactive time. The lens gives encompassing visual feedback on the quality of candidate models as it is interactively navigated across the input data. While our regression lens can be used for fully interactive modeling, we also provide user guidance suggesting appropriate models and data subsets, by means of regression quality scores. We show, by means of use cases, that our regression lens is an effective tool for user-driven regression modeling and supports model understanding.Item Constructing and Evaluating Visualisation Task Classifications: Process and Considerations(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Kerracher, Natalie; Kennedy, Jessie; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeCategorising tasks is a common pursuit in the visualisation research community, with a wide variety of taxonomies, typologies, design spaces, and frameworks having been developed over the last three decades. While these classifications are universally purported to be useful in both the design and evaluation processes and in guiding future research, remarkably little attention has been paid to how these frameworks have-and can be-constructed and evaluated. In this paper we review the task classification literature and report on current practices in construction and evaluation. We consider the stages of task classification construction and identify the associated threats to validity arising at each stage and in response to the different methods employed. We provide guidance on suitable validation approaches in order to mitigate these threats. We also consider the appropriateness of evaluation strategies according to the different aspects of the classification which they evaluate. In so doing, we seek to provide guidance for developers of classifications in determining appropriate construction and evaluation strategies when developing a classification, and also for those selecting between competing classifications for use in the design and evaluation processes.Item Interactive Ambiguity Resolution of Named Entities in Fictional Literature(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Stoffel, Florian; Jentner, Wolfgang; Behrisch, Michael; Fuchs, Johannes; Keim, Daniel A.; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeNamed entity recognition (NER) denotes the task to detect entities and their corresponding classes, such as person or location, in unstructured text data. For most applications, state of the art NER software is producing reasonable results. However, as a consequence of the methodological limitations and the well-known pitfalls when analyzing natural language data, the NER results are likely to contain ambiguities. In this paper, we present an interactive NER ambiguity resolution technique, which enables users to create (post-processing) rules for named entity recognition data based on the content and entity context of the analyzed documents. We specifically address the problem that in use-cases where ambiguities are problematic, such as the attribution of fictional characters with traits, it is often unfeasible to train models on custom data to improve state of the art NER software. We derive an iterative process model for improving NER results, show an interactive NER ambiguity resolution prototype, illustrate our approach with contemporary literature, and discuss our work and future research.Item Integrating Visual Analytics Support for Grounded Theory Practice in Qualitative Text Analysis(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Chandrasegaran, Senthil; Badam, Sriram Karthik; Kisselburgh, Lorraine; Ramani, Karthik; Elmqvist, Niklas; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeWe present an argument for using visual analytics to aid Grounded Theory methodologies in qualitative data analysis. Grounded theory methods involve the inductive analysis of data to generate novel insights and theoretical constructs. Making sense of unstructured text data is uniquely suited for visual analytics. Using natural language processing techniques such as parts-ofspeech tagging, retrieving information content, and topic modeling, different parts of the data can be structured and semantically associated, and interactively explored, thereby providing conceptual depth to the guided discovery process. We review grounded theory methods and identify processes that can be enhanced through visual analytic techniques. Next, we develop an interface for qualitative text analysis, and evaluate our design with qualitative research practitioners who analyze texts with and without visual analytics support. The results of our study suggest how visual analytics can be incorporated into qualitative data analysis tools, and the analytic and interpretive benefits that can result.Item Graph Layouts by t-SNE(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Kruiger, J. F.; Rauber, Paulo E.; Martins, Rafael Messias; Kerren, Andreas; Kobourov, Stephen; Telea, Alexandru C.; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeWe propose a new graph layout method based on a modification of the t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) dimensionality reduction technique. Although t-SNE is one of the best techniques for visualizing high-dimensional data as 2D scatterplots, t-SNE has not been used in the context of classical graph layout. We propose a new graph layout method, tsNET, based on representing a graph with a distance matrix, which together with a modified t-SNE cost function results in desirable layouts. We evaluate our method by a formal comparison with state-of-the-art methods, both visually and via established quality metrics on a comprehensive benchmark, containing real-world and synthetic graphs. As evidenced by the quality metrics and visual inspection, tsNET produces excellent layouts.Item Internal and External Visual Cue Preferences for Visualizations in Presentations(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Kong, Ha-Kyung; Liu, Zhicheng; Karahalios, Karrie; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkePresenters, such as analysts briefing to an executive committee, often use visualizations to convey information. In these cases, providing clear visual guidance is important to communicate key concepts without confusion. This paper explores visual cues that guide attention to a particular area of a visualization. We developed a visual cue taxonomy distinguishing internal from external cues, designed a web tool based on the taxonomy, and conducted a user study with 24 participants to understand user preferences in choosing visual cues. Participants perceived internal cues (e.g., transparency, brightness, and magnification) as the most useful visual cues and often combined them with other internal or external cues to emphasize areas of focus for their audience. Interviews also revealed that the choice of visual cues depends on not only the chart type, but also the presentation setting, the audience, and the function cues are serving. Considering the complexity of choosing visual cues, we provide design implications for improving the organization, consistency, and integration of visual cues within existing workflows.Item Visual Narrative Flow: Exploring Factors Shaping Data Visualization Story Reading Experiences(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) McKenna, Sean; Riche, Nathalie Henry; Lee, Bongshin; Boy, Jeremy; Meyer, Miriah; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeMany factors can shape the flow of visual data-driven stories, and thereby the way readers experience those stories. Through the analysis of 80 existing stories found on popular websites, we systematically investigate and identify seven characteristics of these stories, which we name ''flow-factors,'' and we illustrate how they feed into the broader concept of ''visual narrative flow.'' These flow-factors are navigation input, level of control, navigation progress, story layout, role of visualization, story progression, and navigation feedback. We also describe a series of studies we conducted, which shed initial light on how different visual narrative flows impact the reading experience. We report on two exploratory studies, in which we gathered reactions and preferences of readers for stepper- vs. scroller-driven flows. We then report on a crowdsourced study with 240 participants, in which we explore the effect of the combination of different flow-factors on readers' engagement. Our results indicate that visuals and navigation feedback (e.g., static vs. animated transitions) have an impact on readers' engagement, while level of control (e.g., discrete vs. continuous) may not.Item Overview + Detail Visualization for Ensembles of Diffusion Tensors(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Zhang, Changgong; Caan, Matthan W. A.; Höllt, Thomas; Eisemann, Elmar; Vilanova, Anna; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeA Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) group study consists of a collection of volumetric diffusion tensor datasets (i.e., an ensemble) acquired from a group of subjects. The multivariate nature of the diffusion tensor imposes challenges on the analysis and the visualization. These challenges are commonly tackled by reducing the diffusion tensors to scalar-valued quantities that can be analyzed with common statistical tools. However, reducing tensors to scalars poses the risk of losing intrinsic information about the tensor. Visualization of tensor ensemble data without loss of information is still a largely unsolved problem. In this work, we propose an overview + detail visualization to facilitate the tensor ensemble exploration. We define an ensemble representative tensor and variations in terms of the three intrinsic tensor properties (i.e., scale, shape, and orientation) separately. The ensemble summary information is visually encoded into the newly designed aggregate tensor glyph which, in a spatial layout, functions as the overview. The aggregate tensor glyph guides the analyst to interesting areas that would need further detailed inspection. The detail views reveal the original information that is lost during aggregation. It helps the analyst to further understand the sources of variation and formulate hypotheses. To illustrate the applicability of our prototype, we compare with most relevant previous work through a user study and we present a case study on the analysis of a brain diffusion tensor dataset ensemble from healthy volunteers.Item Reverse-Engineering Visualizations: Recovering Visual Encodings from Chart Images(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Poco, Jorge; Heer, Jeffrey; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeWe investigate how to automatically recover visual encodings from a chart image, primarily using inferred text elements. We contribute an end-to-end pipeline which takes a bitmap image as input and returns a visual encoding specification as output. We present a text analysis pipeline which detects text elements in a chart, classifies their role (e.g., chart title, x-axis label, y-axis title, etc.), and recovers the text content using optical character recognition. We also train a Convolutional Neural Network for mark type classification. Using the identified text elements and graphical mark type, we can then infer the encoding specification of an input chart image. We evaluate our techniques on three chart corpora: a set of automatically labeled charts generated using Vega, charts from the Quartz news website, and charts extracted from academic papers. We demonstrate accurate automatic inference of text elements, mark types, and chart specifications across a variety of input chart types.Item Finding a Clear Path: Structuring Strategies for Visualization Sequences(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Hullman, Jessica; Kosara, Robert; Lam, Heidi; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeLittle is known about how people structure sets of visualizations to support sequential viewing. We contribute findings from several studies examining visualization sequencing and reception. In our first study, people made decisions between various possible structures as they ordered a set of related visualizations (consisting of either bar charts or thematic maps) into what they considered the clearest sequence for showing the data.We find that most people structure visualization sequences hierarchically: they create high level groupings based on shared data properties like time period, measure, level of aggregation, and spatial region, then order the views within these groupings. We also observe a tendency for certain types of similarities between views, like a common spatial region or aggregation level, to be seen as more appropriate categories for organizing views in a sequence than others, like a common time period or measure. In a second study, we find that viewers' perceptions of the quality and intention of different sequences are largely consistent with the perceptions of the users who created them. The understanding of sequence preferences and perceptions that emerges from our studies has implications for the development of visualization authoring tools and sequence recommendations for guided analysis.Item Glyph-Based Comparative Stress Tensor Visualization in Cerebral Aneurysms(The Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017) Meuschke, Monique; Voß, Samuel; Beuing, Oliver; Preim, Bernhard; Lawonn, Kai; Heer, Jeffrey and Ropinski, Timo and van Wijk, JarkeWe present the first visualization tool that enables a comparative depiction of structural stress tensor data for vessel walls of cerebral aneurysms. Such aneurysms bear the risk of rupture, whereas their treatment also carries considerable risks for the patient. Medical researchers emphasize the importance of analyzing the interaction of morphological and hemodynamic information for the patient-specific rupture risk evaluation and treatment analysis. Tensor data such as the stress inside the aneurysm walls characterizes the interplay between the morphology and blood flow and seems to be an important rupture-prone criterion. We use different glyph-based techniques to depict local stress tensors simultaneously and compare their applicability to cerebral aneurysms in a user study. We thus offer medical researchers an effective visual exploration tool to assess the aneurysm rupture risk.We developed a GPU-based implementation of our techniques with a flexible interactive data exploration mechanism. Our depictions are designed in collaboration with domain experts, and we provide details about the evaluation.
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