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[Colloquium] Multivariate Volume Visualization

January 30, 2007

Watch Colloquium: 

AVI file (391 MB)
Quicktime (142 MB)


  • Date: Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 
  • Time: 11 am — 12:15 pm 
  • Place: ECE 118

Joe Kniss 
University of New Mexico

Abstract: Scientific visualization is a discipline that joins data analysis and human visual perception. Visualization addresses a need for high performance, interactive data exploration of ever increasing size and complexity. My recent focuses on volume visualization techniques. Volume visualization deals with the discovery and display of important features embedded in three-dimensional data. My research aims to enhance interactive direct volume rendering visualization applications by focusing on the design of transfer functions for multi-variate data and shading models for visualizing this kind of data. I will discuss three main contributions: analytic transfer functions for interactive classification of arbitrary multi-field datasets, data-space reparameterization for encoding pre-classified data, and interactive volumetric light transport for rendering multi-field data. We use these techniques to show that high quality multi-dimensional transfer functions, classification, and light transport algorithms are beneficial for interactive three-dimensional multi-field volume rendering in medical and scientific applications.

Bio: Joe is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico. He received a PhD from the University of Utah in 2006. During this time, he was a DOE High Performance Computer Science Graduate Fellow. He received a Masters of Science from the University of Utah in 2002 and a Bachelors of Science from Idaho State University in 1999. He recently co-authored a book, “Realtime Volume Graphics”, which covers foundational and advanced methods for volume rendering. His research interests include computer graphics, visualization, human-computer interaction, pattern recognition, image processing, and virtual environments.