Multi-Resolution Representation of Topology
Kree Cole-McLaughlin, Pascucci · University of North Texas Digital Library (University of North Texas) · 2004
The Contour Tree of a scalar field is the graph obtained by contracting all the connected components of the level sets of the field into points. This is a powerful abstraction for representing the structure of the field with explicit description of the topological changes of its level sets. It has proven effective as a data-structure for fast extraction of isosurfaces and its application has been advocated as a user interface component guiding interactive data exploration sessions. We propose a new metaphor for visualizing the Contour Tree borrowed from the classical design of a mechanical orrery reproducing a hierarchy of orbits of the planets around the sun or moons around a planet. In the toporrery the hierarchy of stars, planets and moons is replaced with a hierarchy of maxima, minima and saddles that can be interactively filtered, both uniformly and adaptively, by importance with respect to a given metric.