My research objectives are to explore and develop interaction models and visualization techniques that will
enable intuitive, efficient, interactive visual exploration, manipulation, comparison, and analysis of 2D and 3D
(spatial) data. I am especially interested in medical data sets although other types of data (for example, color
images, CAD meshes, even non-scientific data such as PDF files or PowerPoint slides) are also of interest.
The resulting interactive visualization algorithms should be extremely easy to use, self-descriptive, aesthetically
pleasing, should engage the user, and be underpinned by powerful data representation models and data processing
algorithms. To make effective use of all the available data in various applications, users must be able to quickly
and effortlessly focus on features of interest within the data, while maintaining contextual visualization. This
capability will be supported, in part, by creating semantic software layers on top of the otherwise "pure" data,
providing high-level access methods that will allow users to interact with the data using virtual analogies of
familiar real-world actions. Examples of such input actions include cutting, pushing/pulling, sliding, folding, and
sketching. These natural actions will be interpreted in intelligent ways by the software, resulting in a more efficient
and deeper insight into the data.
Some of the interactive data visualization tasks of interest are: data extraction, modeling, and 3D editing,
visual comparison of two objects, object feature selection and emphasis, object manipulation in 3D, object
measurement and annotation, tracking changes in objects, object interrelationship visualization and analysis,
volume image navigation, and generating multiple views of data to provide view focus and context, to name a
few. The integration of user collaboration mechanisms is also of interest, allowing multiple users to
simultaneously view and interact with the data.
The novelty of this work lies in the synthesis of state-of-the-art computer graphics and data processing algorithms,
recent and/or original interaction models (such as sketching), new input devices, and large/multiple display devices,
all of which must be seamlessly woven together to provide semantic interaction and semantic data visualization.