Topology-based flow visualization, the state of the art

Flow visualization research has made rapid advances in recent years, especially in the area of topology-based flow visualization. The ever increasing size of scientific data sets favors algorithms that are capable of extracting important subsets of the data, leaving the scientist with a more manageable representation that may be visualized interactively. Extracting the topology of a flow achieves the goal of obtaining a compact representation of a vector or tensor field while simultaneously retaining its most important features. We present the state of the art in topology-based flow visualization techniques. We outline numerous topology-based algorithms categorized according to the type and dimensionality of data on which they operate and according to the goal-oriented nature of each method. Topology tracking algorithms are also discussed. The result serves as a useful introduction and overview to research literature concerned with the study of topology-based flow visualization.

@InCollection { LHZP07a,
  author       = "Laramee, Robert S. and Hauser, Helwig and Zhao, Lingxiao and Post, Frits H.",
  title        = "Topology-based flow visualization, the state of the art",
  booktitle    = "Topology-Based Methods in Visualization",
  year         = "2007",
  editor       = "Helwig Hauser and Hans Hagen and Holger Theisel",
  publisher    = "Springer Verlag, Mathematics and Visualization Series",
  note         = "(note 978-3-540-70822-3)",
  type         = "incollection",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2007/LHZP07a"
}