IN4086 Data visualization
Details at a glance
Lecturers: Dr. Charl Botha, Dr. Gerwin de Haan, Ir. Peter van Nieuwenhuizen. Guests: Prof. Frits Post and Prof.dr. Jos Roerdink.
Credits: 0/0/4/0 lectures and 56 hours of project work; 6 ECTS points.
Material: See Blackboard for slides and some of the papers, this website for the rest.
Prerequisite: IN2770 or a similar course (recommended). For students without this background, there will be a special lecture on Tuesday November 15.
Goal: Data visualization is the representation of large quantities of data by computer generated images. The data sets can be results of numerical computations or measurements (scientific visualization), or other large data collections such as databases (information visualization). The goal is to improve interpretation and communication of data. The emphasis of the course is on visualization of scientific and engineering data.
Contents: Theory and general principles are discussed, and illustrated by practical examples from many application areas. Topics covered: models of the visualization process; basic 3D computer graphics; 2D graphs and charts; generation, representation and processing of data; colour and the use of colour; volume visualization and medical applications; visualization of vector fields and flows; feature extraction, and virtual reality.
Project work: Students will work independently in teams of two on a number of free-style projects covering different aspects of visualization.
Assessment: To pass the course, students should have submitted questions / comments on all prescribed scientific articles, taken part in class discussion, submitted projects 1 to 4 on time, presented project 4 (the final project). Projects 1 to 3 get a pass/fail grade, project 4 determines the final grade for the course.
Students of previous (2010/2011 and earlier) course versions
Students who took previous versions of the course and successfully completed the practical (2 EC) have the option of only taking a special written examination on January 31, 2012 from 14:00 to 17:00. If you wish to do this, send an email to datavis@graphics.tudelft.nl.
Course calendars
Our course calendar is available in three different formats:
Procedure with self-study articles
For each paper that you study, you have to formulate a question and mail it to us by the deadline, usually the evening before class. See this page for more details.
Projects
In groups of two, students will work on four independent projects. See the projects pages for details.
Lecture programme
All the information here is also embedded in the calendars above. We are at this very moment working on finalizing this list.
Tuesday November 15 at 10:45: Fundamentals of 3D computer graphics
For students who have completed in2905-A (also known as in2905-I or TI2710-B) Computer Graphics, this is an optional refresher lecture. For students who have NOT completed the mentioned Computer Graphics course, this is a compulsory introductory lecture.
Wednesday November 16 at 15:45: Introduction, visualisation process
Prepare for class: Study paper and submit your question by the evening of Tuesday November 15:
- Laramee 2011 How to read a visualization paper
Tuesday November 22 at 10:45: Colour and the use of colour in visualisation
Wednesday November 23 at 15:45: Data modeling
Prepare for class: Study papers and submit BOTH questions by the evening of Tuesday November 22:
Murch 1984 Colour paper - use this Google Form.
Munzner 2009 Visualization chapter up to page 689, just before 27.5 Interaction Principles - use this Google Form.
Tuesday November 29 at 10:45: Information visualisation and visual analytics
Prepare for class: Study papers and submit BOTH questions by the evening of Monday November 28:
Munzner 2009 Visualization chapter from page 689 up to the end - use this Google Form.
Stolte 2002 Polaris paper - use this Google Form.
Wednesday November 30 at 15:45: Volume Visualisation (1)
Tuesday December 6 at 10:45: Volume Visualisation (2)
Wednesday December 7 at 15:45: Medical Visualisation (1)
Prepare for class: Study paper and submit your question by the evening of Tuesday December 6:
- Kniss et al. 2001, Interactive volume rendering using multi-dimensional transfer functions and direct manipulation widgets.
Use this this Google Form
Tuesday December 13 at 10:45: Guest lecture by Prof. Frits Post on Vector Field Visualization
Confirmed: Frits Post, Eurographics Honorary Fellow and holder of the IEEE Visualization Career award, will give a guest lecture on Vector Field Visualization.
Prepare for class: Study paper and submit your question by Monday December 12 before Noon 11:59am:
D. Dussel, E.J. Griffith, M. Koutek, F. H. Post, Interactive Particle Tracing for Visualizing Large, Time-Varying Flow Fields, Technical Report VIS2009-01, TU Delft Data Visualization Group, June 2009. See also Projects/AtmosphericViz for videos and more background information.
Use this this Google Form
Wednesday December 14 at 15:45: Medical Visualisation (2)
Tuesday December 20 at 10:45: Guest lecture by Prof.dr. Jos Roerdink on Biological Data Visualization
Prof.dr. Jos Roerdink, head of the research group Scientific Visualization and Computer Graphics at the University of Groningen, will give a guest lecture on Biological Data Visualization. It's doubly important that you've study the paper and sent in your question the evening before.
Prepare for class: Study paper and submit your question by Monday December 19 before Noon 11:59am:
- Westenberg 2008 Visualizing genome expression
Use this Google Form
Wednesday December 21 at 15:45: VR and 3D interaction for data visualisation
Prepare for class: Study paper and submit your question by the evening of Tuesday December 20:
Wolter et al. 2009, "Spatial Input for Temporal Navigation in Scientific Visualizations". See this link or download through Blackboard.
Use this this Google Form
References
Here is the list of papers. We collect the full citation information and in most cases links to the fulltext PDFs in our so-called Zotero group (an online research tool). If the PDF is not linked to in the Zotero group, you can find it on our Blackboard thingy.
- D. Dussel, E.J. Griffith, M. Koutek, F. H. Post, Interactive Particle Tracing for Visualizing Large, Time-Varying Flow Fields, Technical Report VIS2009-01, TU Delft Data Visualization Group, June 2009
- J. Kniss, G. Kindlmann, and C. Hansen, “Interactive volume rendering using multi-dimensional transfer functions and direct manipulation widgets,” in Proceedings of the conference on Visualization ’01, Washington, DC, USA, 2001, pp. 255–262.
- R. S. Laramee, “How to Write a Visualization Research Paper: A Starting Point,” Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 29, no. 8, pp. 2363-2371, Dec. 2010.
- R. S. Laramee, “How to Read a Visualization Research Paper: Extracting the Essentials,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 31, pp. 78-82, May 2011.
- M. Meissner, J. Huang, D. Bartz, K. Mueller, and R. Crawfis, “A practical evaluation of popular volume rendering algorithms,” in Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE symposium on Volume visualization, 2000, pp. 81–90.
- T. Munzner, “Visualization,” in Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, Third., P. Shirley and S. Marschner, Eds. AK Peters, 2009, pp. 675–707.
- G. M. Murch, “Physiological principles for the effective use of color,” IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl., vol. 4, no. 11, pp. 49–54, Nov. 1984.
- C. Stolte, D. Tang, and P. Hanrahan, “Polaris: A System for Query, Analysis, and Visualization of Multidimensional Relational Databases,” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 52-65, 2002.
- M. Westenberg, S. Van Hijum, O. Kuipers, and J. Roerdink, “Visualizing genome expression and regulatory network dynamics in genomic and metabolic context,” in Computer Graphics Forum, 2008, vol. 27, pp. 887–894.
- M. Wolter, Tedjo-Palczynski, I.; Hentschel, B.; Kuhlen, T.; , "Spatial Input for Temporal Navigation in Scientific Visualizations," Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE , vol.29, no.6, pp.54-64, Nov.-Dec. 2009, doi: 10.1109/MCG.2009.125