Advanced Visual Systems

15 Blokken, DK 3460, Birkeroed, Denmark

Tel: +45-45999599

E-mail: mikael@avs.dk

Since 1997, AVS is involved in several European Commission research projects related to Visualization, Web and Multimedia. This presentation will highlight some of our achievements and scheduled activities in three major ESPRIT projects.

INDEX

The objective of the INDEX (Intelligent Data Extraction) project was to develop a toolset to improve visualisation of large datasets resulting from simulation applications. Three complementary streams of R&D activities were developed, respectively for: data reduction; data compression; and 3D data representation algorithms in scalar and vector fields. The project began in January 1997 and were completed in early 1999. The project involved more than 13 person years of effort at a cost of 1.8MECU. The partners were AVS, Daimler Benz, Manchester Visualisation Center, University of Stuttgart, Osservatorio Geofisico Sperimentale and British Aerospace. AVS developed two surface reduction (decimation) methods that have now been included in AVS/Express 5.

http://www.man.ac.uk/MVC/research/INDEX/Public

NOVICE

The NOVICE (Network Oriented Visualization in a Clinical Environment) project will provide extendible Web-based visualisation tools for medical applications. Emphasis will be on networked technologies, to enable both remote consultations with experts, and easy re-examination by physicians. NOVICE will provide a Web-based Demonstrator and Service Center with parallel visual computing, accessible to all European hospitals, where advanced visualisation tools can be easily reviewed by the end users. 20 man-years’ work at a cost of 3.1 MECU will be spent over three years. The partners include SGBL (Israel), SiESA (Spain), Rasna Imaging (Italy), Manchester Visualization Center, Foster Findlay (UK) and AVS (Project Coordinator) and several European Hospitals as end users.

A primary charter of NOVICE is to help the European hospitals to advance the state-of-the-art in medical care. Deploying Computer Aided Medical Diagnostics (CAMD) tools outside the research facilities is a difficult challenge facing all research hospitals. NOVICE will provide a Web-based Demonstrator (PaBLO) and Service Center with parallel visual computing, accessible to all European hospitals, where modern CAMD tools can be easily reviewed by the end users. NOVICE brings together the expertise needed to develop such a European Demonstrator. The PaBLO demonstrator can be used at http://dot.mvc.mcc.ac.uk:2077/ari-cgi/pablo.cgi

CONTENTS

The objective of our latest ESPRIT project called CONTENTS (Component Technology Exercised on NT Systems) is to develop customizable Application Components for the interactive visual analysis of data on powerful PC platforms. The data of interest are large multivariate data sets (engineering, medical and commercial) generated by simulation- modeling- and measurement running in a distributed and heterogeneous environment. The components will be based on the emerging industry standard ActiveX/DCOM architecture, but experience will also made by a properly "bridged" towards CORBA based architectures, for the scope of multi-platform portability and compatibility.

These Interactive Visualization Components will be embedded within electronic documents, allowing the author of a report to distribute the relevant electronic information coupled with an embedded data analysis-viewer "smartdoc", which allows the recipients to interactively examine the data in the same way as the original analyst. Instead of being a dumb document, the "smartdoc" will be a complete data exploration application through which a reader can, via embedded visualisation/analysis components, explore the data underlying the report.

Industry British Aerospace and Unilever together with medical research hospital in Firenze will drive the project on the basis of pragmatic practical user needs. Leading edge industrial AVS, AET (Italy) and INTECS (Italy) will provide their high tech competencies and experiences in data reduction and visualization, image processing and management, multi-platform component design and re-engineering.

http://www.pisa.intecs.it/projects/contents