Intelligent Feature Extraction and Tracking for Visualizing Large-Scale 4D Flow Simulations

Terascale simulations produce data that is vast in spatial, temporal, and variable domains, creating a formidable challenge for subsequent analysis. Feature extraction as a data reduction method offers a viable solution to this large data problem. This paper presents a new approach to the problem of extracting and visualizing 4D features within large volume data. Conventional methods requires either an analytical description of the feature of interest or tedious manual intervention throughout the feature extraction and tracking process. We show that it is possible for a visualization system to "learn" to extract and track features in complex 4D flow field according to their "visual" properties, location, shape, and size. The basic approach is to employ machine learning in the process of visualization. Such an intelligent system approach is powerful because it allows us to extract and track an feature of interest in a high-dimensional space without explicitly specifying the relations between those dimensions, resulting in a greatly simplified and intuitive visualization interface.