On Friday March 15, Aleksandra Sima will defend her PhD thesis, entitled An improved workflow for image- and laser-based virtual geological outcrop modelling The defence will take place at 10.15 in the Stort auditorium, Høyteknologisenteret, Thormøhlensgate 55. For more information check the flyer or the official announcement.
Questions to Helwig.HauserUiB.no

For almost one year, the department of informatics have been looking for new professors, and this process is producing its first results. We are proud to announce that Stefan Bruckner has been recently appointed professor in group!
We would also like to welcome two other new members of our group: Anne-Kristin Stavrum and Ivan Kolesar, who are respectively researcher and PhD student in the context of the PhisioIllustrator Project.
Congratulation and welcome to all of you!  

Congratulation to our student Morten Bendiksen, who succesfully defended his M.Sc. thesis entitled Rapid Modeling of Geology .
Abstract: "Drawing three dimensional models of geological phenomena is today a process requiring training in specific programs that can be very time consuming. For illustration and communication of geological concepts, geologists therefore often limit themselves to drawing on paper or to two dimensional drawing applications. In this thesis I propose an approach for making rapid geologic illustrations in 3D. The novel idea for the approach consists of sketch based input on a cube in order to create a layered geological structure. Further details can be added to the layers by sketching geological concepts such as rivers, mountains and valleys. Sedimentary deposits can be created through a procedural modeling approach that employs a volume preserving diffusion algorithm to simulate the flow of depositional material on top of the terrain. Awareness of the geologic domain enables a sparse amount of input strokes to be interpreted into geological structures. Results show that the proposed approach can be used with success to model geological layers. Compared with a 2D sketch, the creation of a 3D geometry on a computer gives advantages such as perspective control, ease of making changes to the model, etc. The approach shows great promise and can be useful in many situations. A program based on the proposed approach could become a standard way for geologists to draw their illustrations."
For more information check out the flyer.
 

A four year PhD position is available in our group. We are looking for candidates with a strong background in computer graphics or visualization. Competence in GPU programmin, software engineering and web development will be particularly emphasized.
The application deadline is March 14, 2013. All the details and the application form can be found on here.
Questions to Stefan.BrucknerUiB.no or Helwig.HauserUiB.no.

Visualization and Visual Analysis of Multifaceted Scientific Data: A Survey by Johannes Kehrer and Helwig Hauser, is currently featured on the TVCG webpage. The paper will be published in the TVCG issue of March 2013.
Congratulation to the authors!
 

The 7th MedViz conference was held January 15 in Hotel Grand Terminus Hall in Bergen. It has been an event of great relevance in the local visualization community, with 7 invited international speakers and more that one hundred participants!
More information can be found on http://medviz.uib.no/.
 

An illustrator position is available at our group in the context of the Physioillustration research project. Application deadline is January 10. The announcement and application form can be found here, do not hesitate to contact us for additional information.
Questions to Helwig.HauserUiB.no or Ivan.ViolaUiB.no

In a new research project, coordinated by GE Vingmed Ultrasound and supported by the Norwegian Research Council in its BIA programme, a three year position as PostDoc or PhD candidate is available. The focus of this position is on advanced 3D visualization of ultrasound data. The application deadline is December 20, 2012. The announcement text is available as PDF. Applications need to be done via the jobbnorge portal here.
Questions to Helwig.HauserUiB.no or Ivan.ViolaUiB.no

A Ph.D. position is available at our group in the context of the Physioillustration project. Application deadline is December 10. The announcement and application form can be found here, do not hesitate to contact us for additional information.
Questions to Ivan.Viola UiB.no

We are happy to congratulate our colleague Veronika Šoltészová who successfully defended her PhD thesis, entitled Perception-Augmenting Illumination. Her defence was held on October 4, 2012, and was the opening talk of the MedVis Day. Congratulations!
For more information check the flyer or the official announcement.
Questions to Helwig.HauserUiB.no .

Congratulation to our student Stian Sivertsen, who succesfully defended his M.Sc. thesis entitled Ridge Extraction, and Illustrative Visualization of an FTLE Flow Field.
Abstract: "Illustrative visualization of a flow is an area that is proving to be interesting and in later years something that have been somewhat explored, it can provide some very interesting results and in this thesis we find the required structures needed for such a visualization. Lagrangian coherent structures are now commonly used in flow visualization and we establish a simplistic approach to creating them in this thesis. The problem of occlusion and the general complexity of both the data and the visual results are still a common thing when working with a structured flow. This thesis presents a solution that identifies the complex and often large amounts of data that is inherent in a flow and tries to find a good way of extracting the structures within. By using the FTLE values found in the flow data we define these structures so that we can see what is going on in these complex systems, as well as combining it with an illustrative approach that will provide an interesting visual aspect to the integral structures found in flows. By using mathematical analysis of the raw data we obtain the necessary tools we need to define and extract ridges that form LCS that we can then model.We use a simple approach by focusing on the basic components of such complex structures as well as utilizing often long standing principles in an interesting way. Combining the strengths of both illustrative visualization and the clarity of integral structures we can create a more visual sound model that loses some of its cluttering complexities but is still capable of generating a pleasing visual end result."
For more information check the flyer.

        

Five papers with contribution from our group have been presented at VisWeek 2012, the worldwide largest and most important scientific conference in visualization This year VisWeek has been held in Seattle (WA), US. The papers will be published in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. Congratulation to the authors!

The 4th of October will be a day full of events for the local visualization community!
First thing in the morning, Veronika Šoltészová will defend her Ph.D thesis, entitled Perception-Augmenting Illumination. The defence will be at 9.00am at the VilVite Auditorium.
Later in the afternoon there will be a series of vis-related seminar jointly organized by MedViz and VCF. They will be held in the same auditorium, from 2.00pm until 4.00pm.
More details can be found on the VCF seminar page!
Questions to Helwig.HauserUiB.no .

The IllustraSound project will make a substantial contribution to the Forskningsdagene here in Bergen.
First of all, our colleague Veronika Šoltészová will compete in the Forsker grand prix on Friday evening at Grieghallen. We wish her the best of luck!
On Saturday, IllustraSound will be also present with a stand in Festplassen, showcasing the most recent advancement in acquisition and display of 3D ultrasound data.
Moreover, just yesterday, Bergen's Tidende published an article about Veronika's work the IllustraSound project.
Congratulations for the great success!

Congratulation to our student Sondre Hisdal, who succesfully defended his M.Sc. thesis entitled Frequency Modulated Shading.
Abstract: "In this thesis we describe a frequency modulated shading technique. The goal is to improve the visualization of 3D ultrasound data by combining depth cues from shadows, and structural information from gradient-based shading. The computation of gradients suffer from noise, and since ultrasound data has a low signalto- noise ration straight forward gradient computation gives poor results. To improve the gradient-based shading we use frequency modulation to get smoothed gradient. The technique performs a local area analysis for each voxel in the volume. The analysis creates a local subvolume around the voxel currently being investigated. This subvolume is transformed into frequency domain, where some frequencies are filtered out. The filtered volume is transformed back into spatial domain, where it is used to compute gradients. The filtered gradients are then used in combination with a shadow renderer, to provide both gradient based shading and shadows."
For more information check the flyer.

We congratulate our student Kari Ringdal who has successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis entitled Flow-based Segmentation of Seismic Data.
Abstract: "This thesis presents an image processing method for identifying separation layers in seismic 3D reflection volumes. This is done by applying techniques from flow visualization and using GPU acceleration. In geology sound waves are used for exploring the earth beneath the surface. The resulting seismic reflection data gives us a representation of sedimentary rocks. Analyzing sedimentary rocks and their layering can reveal major historical events, such as earth crust movement, climate change or evolutionary change. Sedimentary rocks arc also important as a source of natural resources like coal, fossil fuels, drinking water and ores. The first step in analyzing seismic reflection data is to find the borders between sedimentary units that originated at different times. This thesis presents a technique for detecting separating borders in 3D seismic data. Layers belonging to different units can not always be detected by looking in a local neighborhood. Our presented technique avoids the shortcoming of existing methods that work on a local scale by addressing the data globally. We utilize methods from the fields of flow visualization and image processing. We describe a border detection algorithm, as well as a general programming pipeline for preprocessing the data on the graphics card. Our GPU processing supports fast filtering of the data and a real-time update of the viewed volume slice when parameters are adjusted."
For more information check the flyer.

A Ph.D. position is available at the Department of Informatics, University of Bergen. Application deadline is August 10. If you are interested in applying and you want to focus on Visualization or related topic, make sure that it is clearly stated in your application!
The announcement and application form can be found here, do not hesitate to contact us for additional information.
Questions to Helwig.Hauser UiB.no

We congratulate both Armin Pobitzer and Paolo Angelelli from our VisGroup to their successful PhD defenses, which happened June 22, this year.  Congratulations! 
For more information check the flyers (Angelelli, Pobitzer) or the official announcements (Angelelli, Pobitzer). Questions to Helwig.HauserUiB.no .

We are pleased to report that the EC-funded FET-Open project SemSeg, which we also coordinated here in Bergen, was successfully finished by the end of June, this year.  As result of the final review meeting (2nd of July in Zürich, Switzerland), the European Commission concluded that they found the project successful and finished.  Results from the SemSeg project can be found at the respective results page on the SemSeg project web page. 
Questions to Helwig.HauserUiB.no .

Two Ph.D. positions are available at the Department of Informatics, University of Bergen. Application deadlines are June 10 for one position, and August 10 for the other one.
If you are interested in applying and you want to focus on Visualization or related topic, make sure that it is clearly stated in your application!
The announcements and application forms can be found at http://www.jobbnorge.no/job.aspx?jobid=83699 and http://www.jobbnorge.no/job.aspx?jobid=83896, do not hesitate to contact us for additional information.
questions to Helwig.HauserUiB.no .

Visual Computing Forum and MedViz have organized a joint event to conclude both the seminar series before the summer holiday! The final seminar will be held on Friday 15 June on board the Galeasen Loyal! There is only a limited number of places available, check our seminar page for the registration and the seminar details.
contact vcf.bergengmail.com .

We are pleased to announce the invited talk by André Brodtkorb, which will take place next Thursday, 2012-05-31, in the Lille Auditorium.
André is currently a research scientist at SINTEF and associate professor (førsteamanuensis) at the Norwegian School of Information Technology. He will present an overview of GPU computing and current research topics at the Department of Applied Mathematics at SINTEF.
More information available in the flyer.
contact Helwig.HauserUiB.no .

Several of our papers have been recently accepted for publication at international journals or conferences; here is a run down:

• "Geological Storytelling - Graphically Exploring and Communicating Geological Sketches", by Lidal et al., has been accepted at the SBIM conference 2012
• "Real time image-based tracking of 4D ultrasound data", by Øye et al., has been conditionally accepted at the MICCAI conference 2012
• "A Hierarchical Splitting Scheme to Reveal Insight into Highly Self-Occluded Integral Surfaces", by Brambilla et al., has been accepted at the WSCG 2012

This Thursday, 2012-04-26, we get the chance to attend a highly interesting talk by Stefan Bruckner from Vienna Univ. of Technology.
Stefan has not only revolutionized volume rendering, for ex. with his style transfer functions, but also pioneered the interactive visual analysis of volumetric data, more recently. Don't miss this chance!
More information available in the flyer.
contact Helwig.HauserUiB.no .

Every 10 years, Norway's Research Council is organizing an evaluation of all research groups in informatics in Norway, which is worked out by an international board of experts. Being still relatively young, the visualization research group in Bergen was now evaluated for the first time. In total, 62 research groups were evaluated. Five of them received the best possible grade (5) and we are proud that two of them are also from the Dept. of Informatics in Bergen. The VisGroup Bergen was rated 4-5 which places it amongst the top-15% of all informatics research groups in the country -- a good start, as we think! :-)
The full evaluation can be found here.

Several of our papers have been recently accepted for publication at international journals or conferences; here is a run down:

• "Illustrative Flow Visualization: State of the Art, Trends and Challenges", by Brambilla et al., has been accepted at the Eurographics conference 2012.
• "Illustrative Membrane Clipping", by Birkeland et al., has been accepted at the EuroVis conference 2012.
• "Visualization and Visual Analysis of Multi-faceted Scientific Data: a Survey", by Kehrer and Hauser, has been accepted for publication in IEEE TVCG.
• "Design Principles for Cutaway Visualization of Geological Models", by Lidal et al., and "Stylized Volume Visualization of Streamed Sonar Data", by Šoltészová et al., have been accepted at the SCCG conference 2012.

Our recent paper Scientific Storytelling Using Visualization made it to the cover of the last issue of CG&A. Congratulation to the authors for this nice success!

 

We are looking for a brilliant researcher to join our group as a postdoctoral fellow. All the details can be found at http://www.jobbnorge.no/job.aspx?jobid=81303

Contacts: Helwig.Hauser uib.no, Ivan.Viola uib.no

The book Topological Methods in Data Analysis and Visualization II with Editors Ronald Peikert, Helwig Hauser, Hamish Carr, and Raphael Fuchs has finally been published. It part of Springer's series Mathematics and Visualization.  Questions to Helwig Hauser.

Ove Daae Lampe have successfully defended his PhD on the Interactive Visual Analysis of Process Data. More details can be found here.

Ola Kristoffer Øye and Yngve Heggelund, from CMR Computing, described two ongoing R&D projects in their talk CMR Computing – Visual computing and applications.
Fri, Nov. 4, 11:00, Konferanserom C, VilVite.  Questions to Helwig Hauser.

        

Four papers with contributions from Bergen have been presented at VisWeek 2011, the worl-wide largest and most important scientific event in visualization this year held in Providence, Rhode Island, US.  The papers are published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics .  What a nice success ;-)

Ove Daae Lampe gave his trial lecture on Web-based visualization: web technologies suitable for (interactive) visualization and related opportunities.  Wed., 2011-10-26, 14h15, room 2143 @ HiB.  Questions to Helwig Hauser.

Prof. Arvid Lundervold from the Department of Biomedicine, UiB gave an interesting talk on Assessing brain connectivity using RS-fMRI and graph theory in the context of open discovery science.
Fri, Sept. 30, 11:00, Store Auditorium, HiB.  Questions to Helwig Hauser.

Ivan Viola had his keynote talk Passing Through the Trough of Disillusionment of Illustrative Visualization at the Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics Conference at the University of Warwick, September 7–9.  The program can be found here.  Questions to Ivan Viola.

The book Topological Methods in Data Analysis and Visualization II with Editors Ronald Peikert, Helwig Hauser, Hamish Carr, and Raphael Fuchs will be published by Springer in the series Mathematics and Visualization.  Questions to Helwig Hauser.

With satisfaction we are looking back at a very successful EuroVis 2011, which was highly appreciated by its participants.  It is notable that new dimensions were conquered with this year's EuroVis:  never ever more participants joined (we recorded an up of about 15% compared to 2009 and 2010);  no other high-quality conference on visualization (world-wide) received more submissions than EuroVis 2011;  and more than half of the (significantly larger than ever) conference budget was covered by supporters and sponsors. Many reasons, actually, to be very glad to having had EuroVis 2011 in Bergen!  Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

   
Three papers with contributions from Bergen have been presented at EuroVis 2011, Europe's largest Visualization Conference this year organized by our group. The papers are published in a special issue of Computer Graphics Forum, the International Journal of the Eurographics Association. 
Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

We congratulate Johannes Kehrer who successfully defended his PhD project at UiB. 

  trial lecture: Mai 18, 2011, ICT Research School, Solstrand Hotel, Os; given topic:
"Computational Analysis of data in meteorology and climatology"

  PhD defense: May 27, 2011, 3pm, Large Auditorium, room 2144,
Interactive Visual Analysis of Multi-faceted Scientific Data
Evaluation committee: Heidrun Schumann, Min Chen, Marcus A. Bezem.  Questions to Helwig Hauser.

The Fourth Workshop on Topology-Based Methods in Data Analysis and Visualization, TopoInVis 2011, took place in Zurich, Switzerland, April 4–6, 2011.  We are looking back on the nice week including many high-level scientific contributions and SemSeg-related activities. The program is available here. 

Questions to Helwig Hauser.

The annual MedViz conference and 2^nd National PhD conference in Medical imaging was held in Bergen, January 17–18, 2011.  The seminar offered a high-quality program with many excellent speakers (see program).  The event was jointly organized by the Norwegian Research School in Medical Imaging and the MedViz network.

Questions to Helwig Hauser.

The visualization group is entrusted to organize Europe's biggest and most important visualization conference, EuroVis 2011, May 31–June 3, in Bergen next year. We are excited about this big honor and challenge at the same time. We have started to organize the conference and are preparing the event's public relations including flyers, posters, web pages, etc.  Questions to Helwig Hauser and Ivan Viola.

Prof. Oliver Deussen from the University of Konstanz, Germany, was visiting Bergen and we could listen to his interesting talk on

• Computational Aesthetics – science or art? [abstract]
• Fr., September 24, 11:00, Aud. π ("pi", room 307, UiB Math Dept., Johannes Bruns gate 12, ground floor).

On Fr., 2010-09-24, at 2pm, Stian Eikeland successfully defended his Master thesis on "Multi-Volume Visualization and Exploration".  See the official announcement for more details. 

Questions to Helwig Hauser.

We have two interesting talks at the upcomming MedViz seminar, September 10, 2010, 12:15, Store Aud. (room 2144), Høyteknologisenteret (data blokk, 2nd floor), Thormøhlensgate 55:

• Stein Inge Rabben (Group Leader Display & Image Analysis Group, GE Vingmed Ultrasound) will talk about
  Visualization and Image Analysis of Cardiac 3D Ultrasound Data  [abstract] .
• Paolo Angelelli (Visualization Group, UiB) will talk about the Visualization for Ultrasonography  [abstract] .

We are happy to report that the VRVis Conference Calendar is back in an up-to-date state. Now it is even easier to stay tuned with your favorite conferences and deadlines. Also the updating procedure has been optimized in order to facilitate the future maintenance of the calendar.  Questions to Helwig Hauser.

The special issue with Guest Editors Ivan Viola, Helwig Hauser, and David Ebert is published in the Computers & Graphics journal, vol. 34, issue 4, August 2010.
Questions to Helwig Hauser and Ivan Viola.

Three papers with contributions from Bergen have been presented at EuroVis 2010, Europe's largest Visualization Conference this year held in Bordeaux, France. The papers are published in a special issue of Computer Graphics Forum, the International Journal of the Eurographics Association. 
Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

Philipp Muigg from SimVis GmbH in Vienna, Austria, was visiting Bergen and we enjoyed the fruitful research exchange with him.  We were also lucky to listen to him in the

  Institute seminar: June 17 , 2010, 14:15, on "Data Challenges in Visualization" [abstract] .

Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

Mario Costa Sousa from the University of Calgary was visiting Bergen and we had a very interesting time with him, talking about illustrative visualization and sketch-based modeling. We also were lucky to listen to him in the

  Institute seminar: May 27 , 2010, 14:15, on "Illustrative Modeling" [abstract] .

Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

The Visualization Group is grateful about the visit of Master E. Gröller last week.  He gave several interesting and inspiring talks, including:

  Institute seminar: May 20, 2010, 14:15, on "Integrated Views". [ read abstract ]

  MedViz seminar: May 21, 2010, 12:15, on "Comprehensive Visualization of Cardiac MRI Data". [ read abstract ]

Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

The SCCG 2010 conference was held in Budmerice Castle, Slovak Republic during May 13-15, 2010.  The programme of full of very interesting paper presentations and excellent invited talks (by Alfred Inselberg, Milos Sramek, and Michael Goesele).  The atmosphere was excellent and we are looking forward to the next SCCG already now.  [read more!]
Questions to Helwig Hauser.

We congratulate Jean-Paul Balabanian, Ivan Viola, and M. Eduard Gröller to their paper Interactive Illustrative Visualization of Hierarchical Volume Data that won the best student paper award at the Graphics Interface conference 2010 and made it to the cover of the proceedings.
Questions to Ivan Viola.

We congratuate Jean-Paul Balabanian who finish his PhD project at UiB.  His thesis defense was on "Multi-Aspect Visualization: Going from Linked Views to Integrated Views" and his trial lecture on "Mobile Graphics: Visualization opportunities for a multitude of data sources on hand held devices".

Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

Daniel Patel has finished his PhD project here at UiB with a successful PhD thesis defense.  We congratulate the first visualization PhD from the University of Bergen! 

Still available here for your reference:
 the abstract from the trial lecture
 the abstract from the thesis defense

Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

We thank our guest Dieter Hönigmann for his nice invited talk ''Cute Images of Nasty Data -  The Art of Ultrasound Data Visualization'' (Oct. 1st, 2009). An abstract is available here.
Questions to Helwig Hauser or Ivan Viola.

The gathering on illustrative visualization has been captured for those who have missed the opportunity to participate.  To find the videos from talks, please visit speakers' pages accessible from the IllustraVis09 webpage. 
Questions to Ivan Viola (or Helwig Hauser).

We are excited that our new cooperative IllustraSound project had a great start and we thank the Norwegian Research Council and the VERDIKT programme for supporting this line of research!

In that respect, we are especially happy to welcome three new research colleagues to our group: Veronika Šoltészová (new PhD stip.), Åsmund Birkeland (new PhD stip.), and Svein Brekke (new senior researcher). 
Welcome to the team!

Questions to Ivan Viola (or Helwig Hauser).

We thank Timo Ropinski (from the the VisCG group at the Univ. of Münster, Germany) for a wonderful invited talk about Multimodal Vessel Visualization of Mouse Aorta PET/CT Scans on Sept. 4th, 2009. An abstract is available.
Questions to Ivan Viola (or Helwig Hauser).

We are glad to report that the new SemSeg project was successfully started.  A first draft of a project home page has been set up.  We acknowledge the support from the European Commission in the context of the 7th Framework Programme. 
Questions to Ivan Viola (or Helwig Hauser).

Jean-Paul Balabanian has published an online volume raycaster on our web page -- have a look and enjoy!
For more information contact Jean-Paul Balabanian (contact information on our team page) .

We are glad to report that the Bergen VisGroup is participating in a new EU-project (coordination action VisMaster ) to establish visual analytics research in Europe.  Questions should be directed to Helwig.HauserUiB.no.

For older ''news'' messages, which previously showed up at this page, see a separate page (old news).