VisGap2020 - The Gap between Visualization Research and Visualization Software

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https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/2632902

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Tales from the Trenches: Developing sciview, a new 3D viewer for the ImageJ community
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Günther, Ulrik; Harrington, Kyle I. S.; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
ImageJ/Fiji is a widely-used tool in the biomedical community for performing everyday image analysis tasks. However, its 3D viewer component (aptly named 3D Viewer) has become dated and is no longer actively maintained. We set out to create an alternative tool that not only brings modern concepts and APIs from computer graphics to ImageJ, but is designed to be robust to long-term, open-source development. To achieve this we divided the visualization logic into two parts: the rendering framework, scenery, and the user-facing application, sciview. In this paper we describe the development process and design decisions made, putting an emphasis on sustainable development, community building, and software engineering best practises. We highlight the motivation for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) as a target platform for visualisation applications. We conclude by discussing the remaining milestones and strategy for long-term sustainability.
Framing the Challenges of Operational and Domain Usage of Volume Visualization Methods in Ocean Science
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Bemis, Karen; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
Several case studies are used to explore why the adoption of visualization software, especially for the visualization of 3D timevarying ocean data, has lagged behind the development of visualization techniques. The development history of the Silver and Wang feature tracking for time-varying 3D volume data highlights the challenges of decadal scale development and support. The experiences of supporting operational use of processing and visualization for the COVIS oceanographic instrument suggest packaging and version control are far more critical than most users or developers in the ocean science community realize. Initial efforts to package feature extraction and skeletonization for a domain scientist lead to the realization that ease of configuration is critical to supporting scientific exploration, experimentation, and illustration. A consideration of the history of marching cubes focuses attention on the gap between the development of methods and the dissemination of fully mature software. These challenges can be framed succinctly as Discovery, Relevance, Adaptability for Ease of Usage, Input/Output Flexibility, Reliability, and Sustainability. The lessons learned here suggest the need for a more sustainable funding model, strong expectations for code dissemination and documentation, attention to the needs of users especially domain scientists, and greater visibility of code development efforts to end users.
Visualization in Notebook-Style Interfaces
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Schmidt, Johanna; Ortner, Thomas; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
Visualization research has always stressed the need for visual tools for data exploration and sense making. Despite the fact that many visualization technologies are available nowadays, their application in modern data science workflows is limited. One of the manifold reasons behind this is the development of visual analytics tools as standalone applications, featuring the complete pipeline from data loading to visualization. Other tools are targeted towards specific use cases (e.g., data wrangling), but to not provide standardized interfaces for import and export. This does not reflect the approach of stitching together several tools as it is employed in data science workflows nowadays. In this paper we outline the differences between standalone tools and notebook-style workflows for a specific use case for time series analysis. The outcomes demonstrate the benefits of notebookstyle interfaces for tracking the steps in a data analysis workflow in a narrative way, for reporting, and for collaboration. We therefore argue that not considering the current developments towards the increased application of notebook-style interfaces for data science will lead to a reduced application and acceptance of visualization techniques in these domains. We outline the barriers for the integration of visualization techniques in narrative workflows, and describe directions for future research.
From Research Topic to Industrial Practice: An Experience Report
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Gospodnetic, Petra; Rauhut, Markus; Hagen, Hans; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
Continuous technological progress requires both research and industry to work together. It is a necessity which cannot and should not be avoided. However, due to different interests of the two, it is often accompanied by various challenges. The inability to foresee and overcome the challenges can greatly impact the quality of collaboration results and thus chances of such results being used further by the industry. In this paper, we provide background on the topic and emphasize frequently discussed points. Focus of the work are industry-academia collaborations in applied computer science research such as visualization. For that purpose, a set of requirements is recognized and provided for both industry and research community. Further, we provide an overview of challenges recognized over years of experience from working in industry-academia collaborations. Together, the challenges indicate the gap between the industry and research which is inherently transferred further onto results of collaborative research. Finally, we discuss various possibilities for both industry and research to reduce the gap.
VisGap 2020: Frontmatter
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Gillmann, Christina; Krone, Michael; Reina, Guido; Wischgoll, Thomas; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
Lessons Learnt from Developing Visual Analytics Applications for Adaptive Prostate Cancer Radiotherapy
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Raidou, Renata Georgia; Furmanová, Katarína; Grossmann, Nicolas; Casares-Magaz, Oscar; Moiseenko, Vitali; Einck, John P.; Gröller, Eduard; Muren, Ludvig P.; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
In radiotherapy (RT), changes in patient anatomy throughout the treatment period might lead to deviations between planned and delivered dose, resulting in inadequate tumor coverage and/or overradiation of healthy tissues. Adapting the treatment to account for anatomical changes is anticipated to enable higher precision and less toxicity to healthy tissues. Corresponding tools for the in-depth exploration and analysis of available clinical cohort data were not available before our work. In this paper, we discuss our on-going process of introducing visual analytics to the domain of adaptive RT for prostate cancer. This has been done through the design of three visual analytics applications, built for clinical researchers working on the deployment of robust RT treatment strategies. We focus on describing our iterative design process, and we discuss the lessons learnt from our fruitful collaboration with clinical domain experts and industry, interested in integrating our prototypes into their workflow.
Towards Closing the Gap of Medical Visualization Research and Clinical Daily Routine
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Maack, Robin Georg Claus; Saur, Dorothee; Hagen, Hans; Scheuermann, Gerik; Gillman, Christina; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
Medical visualization papers are constantly published throughout the last years, but many never make their way into clinical daily routine. In this manuscript we aim to examine the gap between visualization research and clinical daily routine and suggest a mechanism that can lead towards closing this gap. We first identify the actors involved in developing new medical visualization approaches and their different views in this process. Then we develop a software development process unifying all actors and their needs. In addition, we collect further barriers in the medical software development process.
Lessons Learned from Large Data Visualization Software Development for the K computer
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Nonaka, Jorji; Sakamoto, Naohisa; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
High Performance Computing (HPC) always had a close relationship with visualization as we can remember the landmark report on ''Visualization in Scientific Computing'', which was credited to have coined the term Scientific Visualization (SciVis). K computer, a Japanese flagship HPC system, appeared in 2011 as the most powerful supercomputer in the Top500 list, and as other similar HPC systems in that ranking, it was designed to enable ''Grand Challenge'' scientific computing with unprecedented scale and size. RIKEN Center for Computational Science (RIKEN R-CCS) operated and provided the K computer's computational resources to the HPC community for almost 8 years until it was decommissioned in 2019. Considering that most of the scientific computing results were publicly presented in the form of visual images and movies, we can infer that the SciVis was widely applied for assisting the domain scientists with their end-to-end scientific computing workflows. In addition to the traditional visualization applications, various others large data visualization software development were conducted in order to tackle the increased size and amount of the simulation outputs. RIKEN R-CCS participated in some of these development and deployment dealing with several environmental and human factors. Although we have no precise statistics regarding the visualization software usage, in this paper, we would like to present some findings and lessons learned from the large data visualization software development in the K computer environment.
Selecting and Sharing Multidimensional Projection Algorithms: A Practical View
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Espadoto, Mateus; Vernier, Eduardo Faccin; Telea, Alexandru C.; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
Multidimensional Projection techniques are often used by data analysts for exploring multivariate datasets, but the task of selecting the best technique for the job is not trivial, as there are many candidates and the reasons for picking one over another are usually unclear. On the other hand, researchers developing new techniques can have a hard time comparing their new technique to existing ones and sharing their code in a way that makes it readily available for the public. In this paper, we try to address those issues systematically by analyzing recent surveys in the area, identifying the methods and tools used, and discussing challenges, limitations, and ideas for further work.
How the Deprecation of Java Applets Affected Online Visualization Frameworks - A Case Study
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Skrodzki, Martin; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
The JavaView visualization framework was designed at the end of the 1990s as a software that provides-among other services- easy, interactive geometry visualizations on web pages.We discuss how this and other design goals were met and present several applications to highlight the contemporary use-cases of the framework. However, as JavaView's easy web exports was based on Java Applets, the deprecation of this technology disabled one main functionality of the software. The remainder of the article uses JavaView as an example to highlight the effects of changes in the underlying programming language on a visualization toolkit. We discuss possible reactions of software to such challenges, where the JavaView framework serves as an example to illustrate development decisions. These discussions are guided by the broader, underlying question as to how long it is sensible to maintain a software.
Participatory Visualization Design as an Approach to Minimize the Gap between Research and Application
(The Eurographics Association, 2020) Jänicke, Stefan; Kaur, Pawandeep; Kuzmicki, Pawel; Schmidt, Johanna; Gillmann, Christina and Krone, Michael and Reina, Guido and Wischgoll, Thomas
Despite acceptance in our field, many sophisticated visualization projects suffer from failing acceptance by the targeted audience. Though the reasons for this circumstance might be manifold, we argue that they align with the typical pitfalls of software development. On the one hand, stakeholders are often not or only marginally integrated in the visualization design process, on the other hand, the goals we follow as visualization scholars do often not align with the goals of the stakeholders, reducing them to data deliverers. We provide case studies reporting on finished and ongoing projects following a participatory design approach. Those projects are initiated by the needs from users in digital humanities, biodiversity research, sports analysis and data science, and our results indicate that participatory visualization design leads to mutual benefits, reducing the gap between research and application in the targeted domain.

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