Multidimensional Time-varying Volume Data Visualization Software Platform

Multidimensional time-varying data visualization is an important research area in scientific visualization. Many kinds of techniques can produce multidimensional time-varying data, such as sensors and scientific simulations. Since time-varying data are large and not intuitive, it is difficult for experts to explore them. With the help of computer graphics, scientific visualization converts data into two dimensional images, and helps domain experts study dynamic aspects and internal structures of data. Thus, it can contribute to the development of many areas. Some common multidimensional time-varying data are weather data, simulation geology data, and computational fluid dynamics simulation data. Time-varying hurricane data include attributes such as temperature, wind velocity and pressure. Hurricane data visualization is useful in instant weather forecast and disaster prevention. Simulation geology data include attributes such as topological structures. Geology data visualization is useful in earthquake prediction and oil prospecting.This paper mainly focuses on simulation geology data. It researches visualization methods in multidimensional time-varying data and use geology simulation data to verify their effectiveness. The research includes two parts. One is multidimensional time-varying data visualization such as rendering, transfer function and real time processing. The other is specific visualization tools and feature extractions methods for geology data. Work in this part includes data simplification, feature extraction, and domain specific visualization.The paper is based on Voxer platform in our group. Voxer is a general visualization platform. The development of a visualization platform is a meaningful task. On one hand, with the help of Voxer, new theories and techniques can be converted into products quickly. On the other hand, platform is an accumulation of previous works and techniques. This paper involves design and development of Voxer, and extends this platform so that it can support multi-dimensional time-varying data. Finally, we practice Voxer platform on geology simulation data. By implementing various modules in time-varying visualization and designing suitable visualization pipeline, we verify the versatility and extensibility of the platform.