Comparative Blood Flow Visualization for Cerebral Aneurysm Treatment Assessment

A pathological vessel dilation in the brain, termed cerebral aneurysm, bears a high risk of rupture, and is associated with a high mortality. In recent years, incidental findings of unruptured aneurysms have become more frequent, mainly due to advances in medical imaging. The pathological condition is often treated with a stent that diverts the blood flow from the aneurysm sac back to the original vessel. Prior to treatment, neuroradiologists need to decide on the optimal stent configuration and judge the long‐term rupture risk, for which blood flow information is essential. Modern patient‐specific simulations can model the hemodynamics for various stent configurations, providing important indicators to support the decision‐making process. However, the necessary visual analysis of these data becomes tedious and time‐consuming, because of the abundance of information. We introduce a comprehensive comparative visualization that integrates morphology with blood flow indicators to facilitate treatment assessment. To deal with the visual complexity, we propose a details‐on‐demand approach, combining established medical visualization techniques with innovative glyphs inspired by information visualization concepts. In an evaluation we have obtained informal feedback from domain experts, gauging the value of our visualization.     

Visual computing for medical diagnosis and treatment

Diagnostic algorithms and efficient visualization techniques are of major importance for preoperative decisions, intra-operative imaging and image-guided surgery. Complex diagnostic decisions are characterized by a high information flow and fast decisions, requiring efficient and intuitive presentation of complex medical data and precision in the visualization. For intra-operative medical treatment, the pre-operative visualization results of the diagnostic systems have to be transferred to the patient on the operation room table. Via augmented reality, additional information of the hidden regions can be displayed virtually. This state-of-the-art report summarizes visual computing algorithms for medical diagnosis and treatment. After starting with direct volume rendering and tagged volume rendering as general techniques for visualizing anatomical structures, we go into more detail by focusing on the visualization of tissue and vessel structures. Afterwards, algorithms and techniques that are used for medical treatment in the context of image-guided surgery, intra-operative imaging and augmented reality are discussed and reviewed.     

Analysis of time-dependent flow-sensitive PC-MRI data

Many flow visualization techniques, especially integration-based methods, are problematic when the measured data exhibit noise and discretization issues. Particularly, this is the case for flow-sensitive phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging (PC-MRI) data sets which not only record anatomic information, but also time-varying flow information. We propose a novel approach for the visualization of such data sets using integration-based methods. Our ideas are based upon finite-time Lyapunov exponents (FTLE) and enable identification of vessel boundaries in the data as high regions of separation. This allows us to correctly restrict integration-based visualization to blood vessels. We validate our technique by comparing our approach to existing anatomy-based methods as well as addressing the benefits and limitations of using FTLE to restrict flow. We also discuss the importance of parameters, i.e., advection length and data resolution, in establishing a well-defined vessel boundary. We extract appropriate flow lines and surfaces that enable the visualization of blood flow within the vessels. We further enhance the visualization by analyzing flow behavior in the seeded region and generating simplified depictions.     

Glyph‐Based Comparative Stress Tensor Visualization in Cerebral Aneurysms

We 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.     

Pathline glyphs

Visualization of pathlines is common and highly relevant for the analysis of unsteady flow. However, pathlines can intersect, leading to visual clutter and perceptual issues. This makes it intrinsically difficult to provide expressive visualizations of the entire domain by an arrangement of multiple pathlines, in contrast to well‐established streamline placement techniques. We present an approach to reduce these problems. It is inspired by glyph‐based visualization and small multiples: we partition the domain into cells, each corresponding to a downscaled version of the entire domain. Inside these cells, a single downscaled pathline is drawn. On the overview scale, our pathline glyphs lead to emergent visual patterns that provide insight into time‐dependent flow behavior. Zooming‐in allows us to analyze individual pathlines in detail and compare neighboring lines. The overall approach is complemented with a context‐preserving zoom lens and interactive pathline‐based exploration. While we primarily target the visualization of 2D flow, we also address the extension to 3D. Our evaluation includes several examples, comparison to other flow visualization techniques, and a user study with domain experts.     

Domain-specific visualization system based on automatic multiseed recommendations: Extracting stratigraphic structures

Underground flow path (UFP) is one of the most significant stratigraphic structures in revealing the distribution of oil or gas from seismic data. We design a domain-specific visualization system to extract the stratigraphic structures by seed point tracing and explore the seismic data by graph interactions. The seeds are automatically generated by kernel function–based density gradients computation. Users are allowed to adjust the recommended seeds by fine-tuning them with visual interactions. The seeds are further merged by a weighted quick-union algorithm to get the link information to construct a graph. Different types of nodes in the graph are designed to enable users to explore the extracted UFP structures intuitively. Finally, we evaluated the proposed approach by performance tests, sensitivity tests, and ground truth tests. The feedback from the domain experts demonstrates that the proposed visualization tool improved the capability of revealing the distribution and geostructures of UFPs compared with the existing methods.     

Efficient direct rendering of deforming surfaces via shared subdivision trees

In this paper, we present a subdivision-based approach to rasterize implicit surfaces embedded in volumetric Bézier patches undergoing a nonlinear deformation. Subdividing a given patch into simpler patches to perform the surface rasterization task is numerically robust, and allows guaranteeing visual accuracy even in the presence of geometric degeneracies. However, due to its memory requirements and slow convergence rates, subdivision is challenging to be used in an interactive environment. Unlike previous methods employing subdivision, our approach is based on the idea where for a given patch only one subdivision tree is maintained and shared among pixels. Furthermore, as the geometry of the object changes from frame to frame, a flexible data structure is proposed to manage the geometrically varying Bézier patches. The resulting algorithm is general and maps well to parallel computing platforms such as CUDA. We demonstrate on a variety of representative graphics and visualization examples that our GPU scheme scales well and achieves up to real-time performance on consumer-level graphics cards by guaranteeing visual accuracy.     

VA-TRAC: Geospatial Trajectory Analysis for Monitoring,Identification, and Verification in Fishing Vessel Operations

In order to ensure sustainability, fishing operations are governed by many rules and regulations that restrict the use of certain techniques and equipment, specify the species and size offish that can be harvested, and regulate commercial activities based on licensing schemes. As the world's second largest exporter offish and seafood products, Norway invests a significant amount of effort into maintaining natural ecosystem dynamics by ensuring compliance with its constantly evolving science-based regulatory body. This paper introduces VA-TRAC, a geovisual analytics application developed in collaboration with the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries in order to address this complex task. Our approach uses automatic methods to identify possible catch operations based on fishing vessel trajectories, embedded in an interactive web-based visual interface used to explore the results, compare them with licensing information, and incorporate the analysts’ domain knowledge into the decision making process. We present a data and task analysis based on a close collaboration with domain experts, and the design and implementation of VA-TRAC to address the identified requirements.     

The FLOWLENS: a focus-and-context visualization approach for exploration of blood flow in cerebral aneurysms

Blood flow and derived data are essential to investigate the initiation and progression of cerebral aneurysms as well as their risk of rupture. An effective visual exploration of several hemodynamic attributes like the wall shear stress (WSS) and the inflow jet is necessary to understand the hemodynamics. Moreover, the correlation between focus-and-context attributes is of particular interest. An expressive visualization of these attributes and anatomic information requires appropriate visualization techniques to minimize visual clutter and occlusions. We present the FLOWLENS as a focus-and-context approach that addresses these requirements. We group relevant hemodynamic attributes to pairs of focus-and-context attributes and assign them to different anatomic scopes. For each scope, we propose several FLOWLENS visualization templates to provide a flexible visual filtering of the involved hemodynamic pairs. A template consists of the visualization of the focus attribute and the additional depiction of the context attribute inside the lens. Furthermore, the FLOWLENS supports local probing and the exploration of attribute changes over time. The FLOWLENS minimizes visual cluttering, occlusions, and provides a flexible exploration of a region of interest. We have applied our approach to seven representative datasets, including steady and unsteady flow data from CFD simulations and 4D PC-MRI measurements. Informal user interviews with three domain experts confirm the usefulness of our approach.     

Proof-of-concept of an information visualization classification approach based on their fine-grained features

The misinformation problem affects the development of the society. Misleading content and unreliable information overwhelm social networks and media. In this context, the use of data visualizations to support news and stories is increasing. The use of misleading visualizations both intentionally or accidentally influence in the audience perceptions, which usually are not visualization and domain experts. Several factors influence o accurately tag a visualization as confusing or misleading. In this paper, we present a machine learning approach to detect if an information visualization can be potentially confusing and misunderstood based on the analytic task it tries to support. This approach is supported by fine-grained features identified through domain engineering and meta modelling on the information visualization and dashboards domain. We automatically generated visualizations from a tri-variate dataset through the software product line paradigm and manually labelled them to obtain a training dataset. The results support the viability of the proposal as a tool to support journalists, audience and society in general, not only to detect confusing visualizations, but also to select the visualization that supports a previous defined task according to the data domain.     

Map Displays for the Analysis of Scalar Data on Cerebral Aneurysm Surfaces

Cerebral aneurysms result from a congenital or evolved weakness of stabilizing parts of the vessel wall and potentially lead to rupture and a life-threatening bleeding. Current medical research concentrates on the integration of blood flow simulation results for risk assessment of cerebral aneurysms. Scalar flow characteristics close to the aneurysm surface, such as wall shear stress, form an important part of the simulation results. Aneurysms exhibit variable surface shapes with only few landmarks. Therefore, the exploration and mental correlation of different surface regions is a difficult task. In this paper, we present an approach for the intuitive and interactive overview visualization of near wall flow data that is mapped onto the surface of a 3D model of a cerebral aneurysm. We combine a multi-perspective 2D projection map with a standard 3D visualization and present techniques to facilitate the correlation between a 3D model and a related 2D map. An informal evaluation with 4 experienced radiologists has shown that the map-based overview actually improves the surface exploration. Furthermore, different color schemes were discussed and, as a result, an appropriate color scheme for the visual analysis of the wall shear stress is presented.     

Autonomous Particles for Interactive Flow Visualization

We present an interactive approach to analyse flow fields using a new type of particle system, which is composed of autonomous particles exploring the flow. While particles provide a very intuitive way to visualize flows, it is a challenge to capture the important features with such systems. Particles tend to cluster in regions of low velocity and regions of interest are often sparsely populated. To overcome these disadvantages, we propose an automatic adaption of the particle density with respect to local importance measures. These measures are user defined and the systems sensitivity to them can be adjusted interactively. Together with the particle history, these measures define a probability for particles to multiply or die, respectively. There is no communication between the particles and no neighbourhood information has to be maintained. Thus, the particles can be handled in parallel and support a real‐time investigation of flow fields. To enhance the visualization, the particles' properties and selected field measures are also used to specify the systems rendering parameters, such as colour and size. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on different simulated vector fields from technical and medical applications.     

Visual Analysis of the Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponent

In this paper, we present an integrated visual analytics approach to support the parametrization and exploration of flow visualization based on the finite-time Lyapunov exponent. Such visualization of time-dependent flow faces various challenges, including the choice of appropriate advection times, temporal regions of interest, and spatial resolution. Our approach eases these challenges by providing the user with context by means of parametric aggregations, with support and guidance for a more directed exploration, and with a set of derived measures for better qualitative assessment. We demonstrate the utility of our approach with examples from computation fluid dynamics and time-dependent dynamical systems.     

Parameterization,Feature Extraction and Binary Encoding for the Visualization of Tree-Like Structures

The study of vascular structures, using medical 3D models, is an active field of research. Illustrative visualizations have been applied to this domain in multiple ways. Researchers made the geometric properties of vasculature more comprehensive and augmented the surface with representations of multivariate clinical data. Techniques that head beyond the application of colour-maps or simple shading approaches require a surface parameterization, that is, texture coordinates, in order to overcome locality. When extracting 3D models, the computation of texture coordinates on the mesh is not always part of the data processing pipeline. We combine existing techniques to a simple parameterization approach that is suitable for tree-like structures. The parameterization is done w.r.t. to a pre-defined source vertex. For this, we present an automatic algorithm, that detects the tree root. The parameterization is partly done in screen-space and recomputed per frame. However, the screen-space computation comes with positive features that are not present in object-space approaches. We show how the resulting texture coordinates can be used for varying hatching, contour parameterization, display of decals, as additional depth cues and feature extraction. A further post-processing step based on parameterization allows for a segmentation of the structure and visualization of its tree topology.     

Interactive virtual probing of 4D MRI blood-flow

Better understanding of hemodynamics conceivably leads to improved diagnosis and prognosis of cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, an elaborate analysis of the blood-flow in heart and thoracic arteries is essential. Contemporary MRI techniques enable acquisition of quantitative time-resolved flow information, resulting in 4D velocity fields that capture the blood-flow behavior. Visual exploration of these fields provides comprehensive insight into the unsteady blood-flow behavior, and precedes a quantitative analysis of additional blood-flow parameters. The complete inspection requires accurate segmentation of anatomical structures, encompassing a time-consuming and hard-to-automate process, especially for malformed morphologies. We present a way to avoid the laborious segmentation process in case of qualitative inspection, by introducing an interactive virtual probe. This probe is positioned semi-automatically within the blood-flow field, and serves as a navigational object for visual exploration. The difficult task of determining position and orientation along the view-direction is automated by a fitting approach, aligning the probe with the orientations of the velocity field. The aligned probe provides an interactive seeding basis for various flow visualization approaches. We demonstrate illustration-inspired particles, integral lines and integral surfaces, conveying distinct characteristics of the unsteady blood-flow. Lastly, we present the results of an evaluation with domain experts, valuing the practical use of our probe and flow visualization techniques.     

Selective Visualization of Vector Fields

In this paper, we present an approach to selective vector field visualization. This selective visualization approach consists of three stages: selectdon creation, selection processing and selective visualization mapping. It is described how selected regions, called selections, can be represented and created, how selections can be processed and how they can be used in the visualization mapping. Combination of these techniques with a standard visualization pipeline improves the visualization process and offers new facilities for visualization. Examples of selective visualization of fluid flow datasets are provided.     

An Illustrative Visualization Framework for 3D Vector Fields

Most 3D vector field visualization techniques suffer from the problem of visual clutter, and it remains a challenging task to effectively convey both directional and structural information of 3D vector fields. In this paper, we present a novel visualization framework that combines the advantages of clustering methods and illustrative rendering techniques to generate a concise and informative depiction of complex flow structures. Given a 3D vector field, we first generate a number of streamlines covering the important regions based on an entropy measurement. Then we decompose the streamlines into different groups based on a categorization of vector information, wherein the streamline pattern in each group is ensured to be coherent or nearly coherent. For each group, we select a set of representative streamlines and render them in an illustrative fashion to enhance depth cues and succinctly show local flow characteristics. The results demonstrate that our approach can generate a visualization that is relatively free of visual clutter while facilitating perception of salient information of complex vector fields.     

Flow charts: visualization of vector fields on arbitrary surfaces

We introduce a novel flow visualization method called Flow Charts, which uses a texture atlas approach for the visualization of flows defined over curved surfaces. In this scheme the surface and its associated flow are segmented into overlapping patches which are then parameterized and packed in the texture domain. This scheme allows accurate particle advection across multiple charts in the texture domain, providing a flexible framework that supports various flow visualization techniques. The use of surface parameterization enables flow visualization techniques requiring the global view of the surface over long time spans, such as Unsteady Flow LIC (UFLIC), particle-based Unsteady Flow Advection-Convolution (UFAC), or dye advection. It also prevents visual artifacts normally associated with view-dependent methods. Represented as textures, Flow Charts can be naturally integrated into GPU flow visualization techniques for interactive performance.     

Explorative Blood Flow Visualization using Dynamic Line Filtering based on Surface Features

Rupture risk assessment is a key to devise patient‐specific treatment plans of cerebral aneurysms. To understand and predict the development of aneurysms and other vascular diseases over time, both hemodynamic flow patterns and their effect on the vessel surface need to be analyzed. Flow structures close to the vessel wall often correlate directly with local changes in surface parameters, such as pressure or wall shear stress. Yet, in many existing applications, the analyses of flow and surface features are either somewhat detached from one another or only globally available. Especially for the identification of specific blood flow characteristics that cause local startling parameters on the vessel surface, like elevated pressure values, an interactive analysis tool is missing. The explorative visualization of flow data is challenging due to the complexity of the underlying data. In order to find meaningful structures in the entirety of the flow, the data has to be filtered based on the respective explorative aim. In this paper, we present a combination of visualization, filtering and interaction techniques for explorative analysis of blood flow with a focus on the relation of local surface parameters and underlying flow structures. Coherent bundles of pathlines can be interactively selected based on their relation to features of the vessel wall and further refined based on their own hemodynamic features. This allows the user to interactively select and explore flow structures locally affecting a certain region on the vessel wall and therefore to understand the cause and effect relationship between these entities. Additionally, multiple selected flow structures can be compared with respect to their quantitative parameters, such as flow speed. We confirmed the usefulness of our approach by conducting an informal interview with two expert neuroradiologists and an expert in flow simulation. In addition, we recorded several insights the neuroradiologists were able to gain with the help of our tool.     

Case Study on Visualizing Hurricanes Using Illustration-Inspired Techniques

The devastating power of hurricanes was evident during the 2005 hurricane season, the most active season on record. This has prompted increased efforts by researchers to understand the physical processes that underlie the genesis, intensification, and tracks of hurricanes. This research aims at facilitating an improved understanding into the structure of hurricanes with the aid of visualization techniques. Our approach was developed by a mixed team of visualization and domain experts. To better understand these systems, and to explore their representation in NWP models, we use a variety of illustration-inspired techniques to visualize their structure and time evolution. Illustration-inspired techniques aid in the identification of the amount of vertical wind shear in a hurricane, which can help meteorologists predict dissipation. Illustration-style visualization, in combination with standard visualization techniques, helped explore the vortex rollup phenomena and the mesovortices contained within. We evaluated the effectiveness of our visualization with the help of six hurricane experts. The expert evaluation showed that the illustration-inspired techniques were preferred over existing tools. Visualization of the evolution of structural features is a prelude to a deeper visual analysis of the underlying dynamics.