Parallel Coordinates Guided High Dimensional Transfer Function Design

Abstract: High-dimensional transfer function design is widely used to provide appropriate data classification for direct volume rendering of various datasets. However, its design is a complicated task. Parallel coordinate plot (PCP), as a powerful visualization tool, can efficiently display high-dimensional geometry and accurately analyze multivariate data. In this paper, we propose to combine parallel coordinates with dimensional reduction methods to guide high-dimensional transfer function design. Our pipeline has two major advantages: (1) combine and display extracted high-dimensional features in parameter space; and (2) select appropriate high-dimensional parameters, with the help of dimensional reduction methods, to obtain sophisticated data classification as transfer function for volume rendering. In order to efficiently design high-dimensional transfer functions, the combination of both parallel coordinate components and dimension reduction results is necessary to generate final visualization results. We demonstrate the capability of our method for direct volume rendering using various CT and MRI datasets.