Nested Tracking Graphs

• Published in: Computer graphics forum Vol. 36; no. 3; pp. 12 - 22
• Main Authors: Lukasczyk, Jonas, Weber, Gunther, Maciejewski, Ross, Garth, Christoph, Leitte, Heike
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.06.2017; Wiley
• Subjects: Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS); Computational fluid dynamics; Computer simulation; Cosmology; Data [Computer Graphics]: Data Structures—Graphs and Networks; Graphs; MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING; Nesting; Topology; Tracking
• ISSN: 0167-7055; 1467-8659
• DOI: 10.1111/cgf.13164

Tracking graphs are a well established tool in topological analysis to visualize the evolution of components and their properties over time, i.e., when components appear, disappear, merge, and split. However, tracking graphs are limited to a single level threshold and the graphs may vary substantially even under small changes to the threshold. To examine the evolution of features for varying levels, users have to compare multiple tracking graphs without a direct visual link between them. We propose a novel, interactive, nested graph visualization based on the fact that the tracked superlevel set components for different levels are related to each other through their nesting hierarchy. This approach allows us to set multiple tracking graphs in context to each other and enables users to effectively follow the evolution of components for different levels simultaneously. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on datasets from finite pointset methods, computational fluid dynamics, and cosmology simulations.