Interactive comparison of scalar fields based on largest contours with applications to flow visualization
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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Determining 3D Flow Fields via Multi-camera Light Field Imaging
Published on: March 6, 2013
Dominic Schneider1, Alexander Wiebel, Hamish Carr
1University of Leipzig. schneider@informatik.uni-leipzig.de
Abstract:
Understanding fluid flow data, especially vortices, is still a challenging task. Sophisticated visualization tools help to gain insight. In this paper, we present a novel approach for the interactive comparison of scalar fields using isosurfaces, and its application to fluid flow datasets. Features in two scalar fields are defined by largest contour segmentation after topological simplification. These features are matched using a volumetric similarity measure based on spatial overlap of individual features. The relationships defined by this similarity measure are ranked and presented in a thumbnail gallery of feature pairs and a graph representation showing all relationships between individual contours. Additionally, linked views of the contour trees are provided to ease navigation. The main render view shows the selected features overlapping each other. Thus, by displaying individual features and their relationships in a structured fashion, we enable exploratory visualization of correlations between similar structures in two scalar fields. We demonstrate the utility of our approach by applying it to a number of complex fluid flow datasets, where the emphasis is put on the comparison of vortex related scalar quantities.
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