Andrej Cedilnik and Penny Rheingans.
"Procedural Annotation of Uncertain Information".
In Proceedings of the 11th IEEE Visualization 2000 Conference (VIS 2000), pp. 77--84, 2000.

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Abstract:

In many applications of scientific visualization, a large quantity of data is being processed and displayed in order to enable a viewer to make informed and effective decisions. Since little data is perfect, there is almost always some degree of associated uncertainty. This uncertainty is an important part of the data and should be taken into consideration when interpreting the data. Uncertainty, however, should not overshadow the data values.

Many methods that address the problem of visualizing data with uncertainty can distort the data and emphasize areas with uncertain values. We have developed a method for showing the uncertainty information together with data with minimal distraction. This method uses procedurally generated annotations which are deformed according to the uncertainty information. As another possible technique we propose distorting glyphs according to the uncertainty information.

Summary:

A problem with many techniques for visualizing uncertainty is their tendency to distort or conceal the data as well as emphasis areas of uncertainty. A method presented here is to use annotations that are generated procedurally and are slightly distorted in areas of high uncertainty. The distortion techniques should procedurally create the annotation reasonably fast that are perceptually normalized and inherently meaningful. These annotation lines vary in brightness, width, smoothness, noise, and modulating amplitude based on uncertainty levels.

Keywords:

Procedural generation, Uncertainty visualization, Annotation, Glyphs

Techniques:

Minimize distraction and data-concealing, add modifications to annotations such as: vary brightness and adjust width to preserve perceptibly (i.e. wide dim lines show areas of high uncertainty); exponential sharpness which creates lines that are sharp and bright in areas of low uncertainty; add noise to the lines in areas of high uncertainty; modulate the line in areas of high uncertainty; distort glyphs in similar manner.

Bibtex:

@InProceedings{  cedilnik:2000:PAUI,
  Author = 	 {Andrej Cedilnik and Penny Rheingans},
  title = 	 {Procedural Annotation of Uncertain Information},
  booktitle =    {Proceedings of the 11th IEEE Visualization 2000
                  Conference (VIS 2000)},
  pages = 	 {77--84},
  year = 	 {2000},
}

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