Time-Varying Fuzzy Contour Trees

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel visualization technique called Time-Varying Fuzzy Contour Trees for analyzing and comparing the topology of multiple scalar fields over time, enabling comprehensive exploration of dynamic spatial data.

Contribution

It extends Fuzzy Contour Trees to handle time-dependent data, allowing non-consecutive time step comparison and continuous reflection of changes in scalar field topology.

Findings

Effective visualization of time-dependent scalar fields.

Supports comparison of non-consecutive time steps.

Demonstrated usefulness on real-world datasets.

Abstract

We present a holistic, topology-based visualization technique for spatial time series data based on an adaptation of Fuzzy Contour Trees. Common analysis approaches for time dependent scalar fields identify and track specific features. To give a more general overview of the data, we extend Fuzzy Contour Trees, from the visualization and simultaneous analysis of the topology of multiple scalar fields, to time dependent scalar fields. The resulting time-varying Fuzzy Contour Trees allow the comparison of multiple time steps that are not required to be consecutive. We provide specific interaction and navigation possibilities that allow the exploration of individual time steps and time windows in addition to the behavior of the contour trees over all time steps. To achieve this, we reduce an existing alignment to multiple sub-alignments and adapt the Fuzzy Contour Tree-layout to continuously reflect changes and similarities in the sub-alignments. We apply time-varying Fuzzy Contour Trees to different real-world data sets and demonstrate their usefulness.