Graxels: information rich primitives for the visualization of time-dependent spatial data

Time-dependent volumetric data has important applications in areas as diverse as medicine, climatology, and engineering. However, the simultaneous quantitative assessment of spatial and temporal features is very challenging. Common visualization techniques show either the whole volume in one time step (for example using direct volume rendering) or let the user select a region of interest (ROI) for which a collection of time-intensity curves is shown. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that dynamically embeds quantitative detail views in a spatial layout. Inspired by the concept of small multiples, we introduce a new primitive graxel (graph pixel). Graxels are view dependent primitives of time-intensity graphs, generated on-the-fly by aggregating per-ray information over time and image regions. Our method enables the detailed feature-aligned visual analysis of time-dependent volume data and allows interactive refinement and filtering. Temporal behaviors like frequency relations, aperiodic or periodic oscillations and their spatial context are easily perceived with our method. We demonstrate the power of our approach using examples from medicine and the natural sciences.