UK AVS+UNIRAS User Group
Annual Conference 5/6 November 2001
Programme

For overall details of the conference and the venue, look here UAUUG Conference 2001.

Monday 5th November

Tuesday 6th November

Keynote Talk:

Terry Hewitt, Manchester Visualisation Centre
Information Visualization
An overview of the perils, pitfalls and benefits of data visualisation.

Other speakers:

Peter Kelly, Advanced Visual Systems
Company Update on technology and future release plans
[PDF 1.4Mb]
The latest technology advances from Advanced Visual Systems will be covered in summary form and an indication of the future directions and capabilities that the company aims to take graphics and visualization.

Jason Alldridge, Advanced Visual Systems
Technical review of latest releases for AVS/Express, Gsharp, Toolmaster, and OpenViz.
[PDF 1.4Mb]
The presentation will focus on the technical advances available to users within the latest release of each of these products. The key features will be demonstrated showing how to utilise the functionality and for what purposes and benefits they offer.

Roger Fleuty, Advanced Visual Systems
Animated Illumination Lines for Flow Visualisation
[PDF 600kb]
The technique of illuminated lines will be illustrated together with live examples of this new functionality within AVS/Express Version 6.0. The technique utilises the OpenGL-specific API in order that textures can be mapped onto line segments. Through the use of real time interaction with the graphical scene lighting effects can ellucidate further details of flow velocities in volumetric vector data.

John Stringer, Advanced Visual Systems
Web based Graphical Display
[PDF 2.1Mb]
The variety of graphical display methods over the web are many. From graphics 'standards' such as VRML, SVG, or Flash, through to zero, thin and thick client/server architectures, with processing undertaken locally or remotely. This talk will summarise the various ways of publishing and analysing data over the web with demonstrations thoughout using the graphical capabilities of Gsharp, OpenViz and AVS/Express.

Mark Mason, Advanced Visual Systems
AVS/Express Multi-pipe Edition
[PDF 2.2Mb]
For immersive or virtual reality scientific visualization, the rich feature set of AVS/Express is now available via the Multi-pipe Edition. Initial availability has been for the SGI ONYX machines powering Reality Centres, Holabenches, and Caves, but this talk will also cover the developments for providing the same technology via a multi-platform solution.

Simon Parker, University of Birmingham
Visualization of Particulate Air Pollution Data with AVS/Express
[Powerpoint 6.8Mb] [PDF 2.1Mb]
Particulate matter makes an important contribution to overall air pollution. Field measurements of particles produce a large amount of data that can be difficult to interpret. The relatively new technique of single-particle mass spectrometry provides information on the chemical composition of particles, but produces data of even greater complexity. The talk will look at some of the benefits involved in using AVS/Express to analyse such data, and some of the practical problems encountered.

Vincent Gaffney, University of Birmingham
Seeing the past: observations on archaeological visualisation.
This lecture introduces the role of visualisation in archaeology. Examples of visualisation will be presented and will include massive terrain and geophysical data capture programmes through to augmented and pseudo virtual representations of the past. The direction of archaeological visualisation at Birmingham will be discussed along with the utility of available softwares for archaeological purposes.

Margaret A. Oliver and Ruth Kerry, University of Reading
Making sense of sensed data using geostatistics
[Powerpoint 2Mb] [PDF 1.3Mb]
Soil sampling and analysis are costly and there is a need to obtain cheaper sources of information to aid farmers to practice precision agriculture. Sensed data, such as that from yield monitors, electromagnetic induction, remotely sensed data, provide a relatively cheap and abundant source of data. If they prove to be related strongly to properties of the soil, then such information could be used to direct precision management of the land efficiently. A range of data has been analysed geostatitistically and the spatial structures illustrated using Gsharp.

Tobias Schiebeck, International AVS Centre
An update on activities at the IAC

James Perrin, International AVS Centre
Visualization for the Clinical Evaluation of Cerebral Aneurysms from MRA Data
This AVS/Express application has been designed to meet the specific needs of interventional neuro-radiologists evaluating the suitability of intracranial aneurysms for endovascular coiling and also when planning the procedure. Providing rapid (real-time) interaction with high resolution iso-surfaces derived from Time-of Flight (ToF) Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA) data will enable the clinician to quickly assess the ability of the aneurysm to accept a coil, with greater reliability than existing, 2D film techniques. Simulating the interface of the C-arm angiography system, used during the procedure, allows the clinician to evaluate various surgical strategies, potentially reducing procedure times and therefore patient radiation dosage.

Paul Lever, International AVS Centre
Visualization of Global Climate Change Data

Matt Cooper, International AVS Centre
The uAUug Visualization Cookbook project
During the summer of 2001 the uAUug supported an IAC summer student project to produce an AVS Express 'cookbook'. Priya Dey, who undertook the work, will be around during the conference. This is a quote from the introduction to the (draft edition) cookbook:

This cookbook aims to show how to tackle some specific visualization tasks using AVS/Express. The examples used will cover different scientific subjects, using medical, meteorological and engineering data. This cookbook describes how to get from the raw data to the rendered image.
The cookbook is written for users who are already familiar with AVS/Express.
Chapter 2 illustrates visualization techniques using medical data as an example application.
Chapter 3 shows an example application using meteorological data.

Krzysztof Nowinski, Polish AVS User Group
Some non-standard use of AVS Express in transportation statistics and simulation