Reaction Diffusion Research

In 2003 I starting looking at Reaction Diffusion and how it could be applied to a variety of applications. The primary difficulty in using reaction-diffusion is in controlling the parameters so that you can get the pattern you want. We developed a CPU and GPU based version of this software for exploring the parameter selection.

Most of the details of this work can be found in:

Allen R Sanderson, Mike Kirby, Chris R Johnson, and Lingfa Yang. "Advanced Reaction-Diffusion Models for Texture Synthesis," In Journal of Graphics Tools Vol. 11, No. 3: p47-71, 2006. [PDF]

Several of the images from this paper were used on the front cover of the Journal of Graphics Tools:

The details of the GPU version of our software can be found in:

Allen R. Sanderson, Miriah D. Meyer, Robert M. Kirby, and Chris R. Johnson. "A Framework for Exploring Numerical Solutions of Advection-Reaction-Diffusion Equations Using a GPU-Based Approach," Accepted for publication in Computing and Visualization in Science 2007. [ PDF ]

We even provide some software that you can use. It has been ported to Linux, OS X and even Windozes. It requires the following OpenGL libraries: Glew, Glui, and Glut for the CPU and GPU versions and also nVidia's Cg libraries for the GPU version. You will need to supply some code from Numerical Recipies that can not be distributed due to copyright restrictions.

CPU Demo Source Code can be found here: rd_cpu_demo.tar.gz
GPU Demo Source Code can be found here: rd_gpu_demo.tar.gz

Here are a few examples of our results compared to some real patterns:

Jewel Moray Eel (Muraena lentiginosa) found in the Baja-Pacific region. Image courtesy of Ken Bondy - www.kenbondy.com.

Papua Toby Puffer Fish (Canthigaster papua) found in the Western Pacific region. Image courtesy of Massimo Boyer - www.edge-of-reef.com.

Map Toby Puffer Fish (Arothron mappa) found in the Indo-West Pacific region. Image courtesy of Massimo Boyer - www.edge-of-reef.com.

Blue Spotted Puffer Fish (Arothron caeruleopunctatus) found in the Indo-Pacific region. Image courtesy of Jeffrey Jeffords - www.divegallery.com.

Other Reaction Diffusion Work:

My collaborator Linga Yang is part of a group that studies nonlinear chemical dynamics and pattern formation at Brandeis Univ. and has developed many other patterns.

Much of my work has its foundation in Greg Turk's disseration and SIGGRAPH paper on Reaction-Diffusion.