An evaluation of flow field visualization with internal views

Abstract

One popular area of research in data visualization is using streamlines to display flow fields, which depict the movement of fluids through a space. Most of the research to date has focused on external visualizations; that is, observing flow fields from outside the boundaries of the data set (e.g., Tao et al. [2013]). This research explores the efficacy of visualizing flow fields internally using an algorithm we developed to automatically compute paths through flow field interiors that provide a high degree of useful information.