Master's Thesis - Studierstube Augmented Reality Project - Graz ...

Chapter 2
Visualization
Visualization is a broad term referring to various fields and disciplines. It is always
related to a human perception, so the interpretation of visualization can differ from
person to person.
In the focus of this work, visualization generally means the representation of complex
data with visual means. In this context the goal of visualization is to give different
observers the same perception of the same coherences of the same data. This chapter
introduces different kinds of presentation techniques and accordingly splits them up to
the underlying data and the information which has to be transported.
Such high-level definitions can be subdivided into numerous sections, which can be
organized in a tree structure. This chapter will follow one path of this tree up to possibilities
suited for complex datasets as described in chapter 3. The junctions through
this tree will define technical visualization and its divisions into scientific visualization
and information visualization which are separated in section 2.1. Passing some insights
in ongoing graphics hardware developments will yield a high level description of the
programing abilities of such a graphical processing unit (GPU) with a special view on
vector processing and flow visualization opportunities.
The focus of this thesis is the processing of image data with additional cardiac
flow patterns, recorded from a MR imaging device. Consequently, cardiac flow data
visualization belongs to the field of scientific visualization which will be illuminated in
section 2.1.1.
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