Machine Learning to Boost the Next Generation of Visualization Technology

Visualization has become an indispensable tool in many areas of science and engineering. In particular, the advances made in the field of visualization over the past 20 years have turned visualization from a presentation tool to a discovery tool. Machine learning has received great success in both data mining and computer graphics; surprisingly, the study of systematic ways to employ machine learning in making visualization is meager. Like human learning, we can make a computer program learn from previous input data to optimize its performance on processing new data. In the context of visualization, the use of machine learning can potentially free us from manually sifting through all the data. This paper describes intelligent visualization designs for three different applications: (1) volume classification and visualization, (2) 4D flow feature extraction and tracking, (3) network scan characterization.