Fast and Accurate CNN‐based Brushing in Scatterplots

Brushing plays a central role in most modern visual analytics solutions and effective and efficient techniques for data selection are key to establishing a successful human‐computer dialogue. With this paper, we address the need for brushing techniques that are both fast, enabling a fluid interaction in visual data exploration and analysis, and also accurate, i.e., enabling the user to effectively select specific data subsets, even when their geometric delimination is non‐trivial. We present a new solution for a near‐perfect sketch‐based brushing technique, where we exploit a convolutional neural network (CNN) for estimating the intended data selection from a fast and simple click‐and‐drag interaction and from the data distribution in the visualization. Our key contributions include a drastically reduced error rate—now below 3%, i.e., less than half of the so far best accuracy—and an extension to a larger variety of selected data subsets, going beyond previous limitations due to linear estimation models.