Chapter Topological Visualisation Techniques for Volume Multifield Data

Overview & Synopsis

This survey paper provides an overview of topological visualisation techniques for scalar data sets. Topological algorithms are used to reduce scalar fields to a skeleton by mapping critical changes in the topology to the vertices of graph structures. These can be visualised using graph drawing techniques or used as a method of seeding meshes of distinct objects existing in the data. Many techniques are discussed in detail, beginning with a review of algorithms working on scalar fields defined with a single variable, and then generalised to multivariate and temporal data. The survey is completed with a discussion of methods of presenting data in higher dimensions.