Tobias Peherstorfer, Sophia Ulonska, Bianca Burger, Simone Lucato, Bader Al-Hamdan, Marvin Kleinlehner, Till F M Andlauer, Katja Buhler
{"title":"Circuit Mining in Transcriptomics Data.","authors":"Tobias Peherstorfer, Sophia Ulonska, Bianca Burger, Simone Lucato, Bader Al-Hamdan, Marvin Kleinlehner, Till F M Andlauer, Katja Buhler","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3594562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2025.3594562","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A central goal in neuropharmacological research is to alter brain function by targeting genes whose expression is specific to the corresponding brain circuit. Identifying such genes in large spatially resolved transcriptomics data requires the expertise of bioinformaticians for handling data complexity and to perform statistical tests. This time-consuming process is often decoupled from the routine workflow of neuroscientists, inhibiting fast target discovery. Here we present a visual analytics approach to mining expression data in the context of meso-scale brain circuits for potential target genes tailored to domain experts with limited technical background. We support several workflows for interactive definition and refinement of circuits in the human or mouse brain, and combine spatial indexing with an alternative formulation of sample variance to enable differential gene expression analysis in arbitrary brain circuits at runtime. A user study highlights the usefulness, benefits, and future potential of our work.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144762356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enhancing Visual Analysis in Person Re-Identification With Vision-Language Models.","authors":"Wang Xia, Tianci Wang, Jiawei Li, Guodao Sun, Haidong Gao, Xu Tan, Ronghua Liang","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3593227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2025.3593227","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Image-based person re-identification aims to match individuals across multiple cameras. Despite advances in machine learning, their effectiveness in real-world scenarios remains limited, often leaving users to handle fine-grained matching manually. Recent work has explored textual information as auxiliary cues, but existing methods generate coarse descriptions and fail to integrate them effectively into retrieval workflows. To address these issues, we adopt a vision-language model fine-tuned with domain-specific knowledge to generate detailed textual descriptions and keywords for pedestrian images. We then create a joint search space combining visual and textual information, using image clustering and keyword co-occurrence to build a semantic layout. Additionally, we introduce a dynamic spiral word cloud algorithm to improve visual presentation and enhance semantic associations. Finally, we conduct case studies, a user study, and expert feedback, demonstrating the usability and effectiveness of our system.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144735526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jaume Ros, Alessio Arleo, Rafael Giordano Viegas, Vitor B P Leite, Fernando V Paulovich
{"title":"Challenges and Opportunities for the Visualization of Protein Energy Landscapes.","authors":"Jaume Ros, Alessio Arleo, Rafael Giordano Viegas, Vitor B P Leite, Fernando V Paulovich","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3592983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2025.3592983","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Protein folding is the process by which proteins go from a linear chain of amino acids to a three-dimensional structure that determines their biological function. Although recent advances in protein three-dimensional structure prediction can directly determine the folded protein's final shape, the process by which this happens is complex and not very well understood. Part of the study of protein folding focuses on the analysis of their \"energy landscape\", defined by the molecule's energy as a function of its structure. The data are mostly obtained through atomic-level computer simulations and are very high-dimensional, making them difficult to interpret. Visualization can be a powerful tool to support researchers studying the energy landscape of proteins; however, we noticed that they are not widely adopted by the scientific community. We present the main methods currently used and the challenges they face, as well as future opportunities for visualization in this field.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144735525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wandrille Duchemin, Takanori Fujiwara, Hollister W Herhold, Elias Elmquist, David S Thaler, William Harcourt-Smith, Emma Broman, Alexander Bock, Brian P Abbott, Jacqueline K Faherty
{"title":"A Cosmic View of Life on Earth: Hierarchical Visualization of Biological Data Using Astronomical Software.","authors":"Wandrille Duchemin, Takanori Fujiwara, Hollister W Herhold, Elias Elmquist, David S Thaler, William Harcourt-Smith, Emma Broman, Alexander Bock, Brian P Abbott, Jacqueline K Faherty","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3591713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2025.3591713","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A goal of data visualization is to advance the understanding of multi-parameter, large-scale datasets. In astrophysics, scientists map celestial objects to understand the hierarchical structure of the universe. In biology, genetic sequences and biological characteristics uncover evolutionary relationships and patterns (e.g., variation within species and ecological associations). Our highly interdisciplinary project entitled \"A Cosmic View of Life on Earth\" adapts an immersive astrophysics visualization platform called OpenSpace to contextualize diverse biological data. Dimensionality reduction techniques harmonize biological information to create spatial representations in which data are interactively explored on flat screens and planetarium domes. Visualizations are enriched with geographic metadata, three-dimensional scans of specimens, and species-specific sonifications (e.g., bird songs). The \"Cosmic View\" project eases the dissemination of stories related to biological domains (e.g., insects, birds, mammals, human migrations) and facilitates scientific discovery.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144692500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nina Errey, Yi Chen, Yu Dong, Quang Vinh Nguyen, Xiaoru Yuan, Tuck Wah Leong, Christy Jie Liang
{"title":"An Age-based Study into Interactive Narrative Visualization Engagement.","authors":"Nina Errey, Yi Chen, Yu Dong, Quang Vinh Nguyen, Xiaoru Yuan, Tuck Wah Leong, Christy Jie Liang","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3591817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2025.3591817","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research has shown that an audiences' age impacts their engagement in digital media. Interactive narrative visualization is an increasingly popular form of digital media that combines data visualization and storytelling to convey important information. However, audience age is often overlooked by interactive narrative visualization authors. Using an established visualization engagement questionnaire, we ran an empirical experiment where we compared end-user engagement to audience age. We found a small difference in engagement scores where older age cohorts were less engaged than the youngest age cohort. Our qualitative analysis revealed that the terminology and overall understanding of interactive narrative patterns integrated into narrative visualization was more apparent in the feedback from younger age cohorts relative to the older age cohorts. We conclude this paper with a series of recommendations for authors of interactive narrative visualization on how to design inclusively for audiences according to their age.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144692501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do Language Model Agents Align with Humans in Rating Visualizations? An Empirical Study.","authors":"Zekai Shao, Yi Shan, Yixuan He, Yuxuan Yao, Junhong Wang, Xiaolong Zhang, Yu Zhang, Siming Chen","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3586461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2025.3586461","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Large language models (LLMs) show potential in understanding visualizations and may capture design knowledge. However, their ability to predict human feedback remains unclear. To explore this, we conduct three studies evaluating the alignment between LLM-based agents and human ratings in visualization tasks. The first study replicates a human-subject study, showing promising agent performance in human-like reasoning and rating, and informing further experiments. The second study simulates six prior studies using agents and finds alignment correlates with experts' pre-experiment confidence. The third study tests enhancement techniques like input preprocessing and knowledge injection, revealing limitations in robustness and potential bias. These findings suggest that LLM-based agents can simulate human ratings when guided by high-confidence hypotheses from expert evaluators. We also demonstrate the usage scenario in rapid prototype evaluation and discuss future directions. We note that simulation may only serve as complements and cannot replace user studies.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144602294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mark S Keller, Eric Morth, Thomas C Smits, Simon Warchol, Grace Guo, Qianwen Wang, Robert Krueger, Hanspeter Pfister, Nils Gehlenborg
{"title":"The State of Single-Cell Atlas Data Visualization in the Biological Literature.","authors":"Mark S Keller, Eric Morth, Thomas C Smits, Simon Warchol, Grace Guo, Qianwen Wang, Robert Krueger, Hanspeter Pfister, Nils Gehlenborg","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3583979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2025.3583979","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent advancements have enabled tissue samples to be profiled at the unprecedented level of detail of a single cell. Analysis of this data has enabled discoveries that are relevant to understanding disease and developing therapeutics. Large-scale profiling efforts are underway which aim to generate 'atlas' resources that catalog cellular archetypes including biomarkers and spatial locations. While the problem of cellular data visualization is not new, the size, resolution, and heterogeneity of single-cell atlas datasets presents challenges and opportunities. We survey the usage of visualization to interpret single-cell atlas datasets by assessing over 1,800 figure panels from 45 biological publications. We intend for this report to serve as a foundational resource for the visualization community as atlas-scale single-cell datasets are emerging rapidly with aims of advancing our understanding of biological function in health and disease.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144512838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jakub Vasicek, Dafni Skiadopoulou, Ksenia G Kuznetsova, Lukas Kall, Marc Vaudel, Stefan Bruckner
{"title":"ProHap Explorer: Visualizing Haplotypes in Proteogenomic Datasets.","authors":"Jakub Vasicek, Dafni Skiadopoulou, Ksenia G Kuznetsova, Lukas Kall, Marc Vaudel, Stefan Bruckner","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3581736","DOIUrl":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3581736","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In mass spectrometry-based proteomics, experts usually project data onto a single set of reference sequences, overlooking the influence of common haplotypes (combinations of genetic variants inherited together from a parent). We recently introduced ProHap, a tool for generating customized protein haplotype databases. Here, we present ProHap Explorer, a visualization interface designed to investigate the influence of common haplotypes on the human proteome. It enables users to explore haplotypes, their effects on protein sequences, and the identification of non-canonical peptides in public mass spectrometry datasets. The design builds on well-established representations in biological sequence analysis, ensuring familiarity for domain experts while integrating novel interactive elements tailored to proteogenomic data exploration. User interviews with proteomics experts confirmed the tool's utility, highlighting its ability to reveal whether haplotypes affect proteins of interest. By facilitating the intuitive exploration of proteogenomic variation, ProHap Explorer supports research in personalized medicine and the development of targeted therapies.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144337278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chi Zhang, Yu Dong, Yang Wang, Yuetong Han, Guihua Shan, Bixia Tang
{"title":"AuraGenome: An LLM-Powered Framework for On-the-Fly Reusable and Scalable Circular Genome Visualizations.","authors":"Chi Zhang, Yu Dong, Yang Wang, Yuetong Han, Guihua Shan, Bixia Tang","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3581560","DOIUrl":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3581560","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Circular genome visualizations are essential for exploring structural variants and gene regulation. However, existing tools often require complex scripting and manual configuration, making the process time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to learn. To address these challenges, we introduce AuraGenome, an LLM-powered framework for rapid, reusable, and scalable generation of multi-layered circular genome visualizations. AuraGenome combines a semantic-driven multi-agent workflow with an interactive visual analytics system. The workflow employs seven specialized LLM-driven agents, each assigned distinct roles such as intent recognition, layout planning, and code generation, to transform raw genomic data into tailored visualizations. The system supports multiple coordinated views tailored for genomic data, offering ring, radial, and chord-based layouts to represent multi-layered circular genome visualizations. In addition to enabling interactions and configuration reuse, the system supports real-time refinement and high-quality report export. We validate its effectiveness through two case studies and a comprehensive user study. AuraGenome is available at: https://github.com/Darius18/AuraGenome.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144337277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fan Lei, David A Sampson, Jiayi Hong, Yuxin Ma, Giuseppe Mascaro, Dave White, Rimjhim Agarwal, Ross Maciejewski
{"title":"FEWSim: A Visual Analytic Framework for Exploring the Nexus of Food-Energy-Water Simulations.","authors":"Fan Lei, David A Sampson, Jiayi Hong, Yuxin Ma, Giuseppe Mascaro, Dave White, Rimjhim Agarwal, Ross Maciejewski","doi":"10.1109/MCG.2025.3581004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2025.3581004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The interdependencies of food, energy, and water (FEW) systems create a nexus opportunity to explore the strengths and vulnerabilities of individual and cross-sector interactions within FEW systems. However, the variables quantifying nexus interactions are hard to observe, which hinders the cross-sector analysis. To overcome such challenges, we present FEWSim, a visual analytics framework designed to support domain experts in exploring and interpreting simulation results from a coupled FEW model. FEWSim employs a three-layer asynchronous architecture: the model layer integrates food, energy, and water models to simulate the FEW nexus; the middleware layer manages scenario configuration and execution; and the visualization layer provides interactive visual exploration of simulated time-series results across FEW sectors. The visualization layer further facilitates the exploration across multiple scenarios and evaluates scenario differences in performance using sustainability indices of the FEW nexus. We demonstrate the utility of FEWSim through a case study for the Phoenix Active Management Area (AMA) in Arizona.</p>","PeriodicalId":55026,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144334521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}