1. Visualization of similarity spaces: Take a set of images. Compute similarity over some metric. Generate visual representation of the space. Have sliders to change parameters, e.g., spatial filtering of image (might get more or less similar). And so on.
2. Visualization of brain imaging data collected longitudinally. We have time-series data across multiple slices in the brain. In addition we have behavioral data associated with the slices. Again, an interactive visualization tool would be very useful.
(1) Creating a virtual environment. This isn't exactly data visualization, but we're doing experiments on human navigation ("cognitive maps") in VR, using the 40 x 40 ft. VENLab with an HMD, tracker, and SGI graphics. It may be possible for a group to create a virtual environment for such an experiment. For example, we're beginning to build a "Hundred acre wood" environment, and pieces of that may be doable. We use WorldToolKit as a platform, so there would be a learning curve involved.
(2) Prism views. A smaller project is to simulate what the world looks like through a distorting prism. This would involve learning a bit of optics (e.g. the transfer function for a wedge prism) and computing the view through it for a moving observer. My interest is in calculating and displaying the optic flow field (a vector field) for different environmentals structures with different types of distortions.
The motivating problem for me is to "look" at 4x4 patches of images and classify them. A 4x4 patch is given by 16 pixels so defines a point in R^16. We can easily generate gigabytes of such patches, hence pts in R^16. But a gigabyte is still small compared to the elbow room in R^16. We have, of course, some ideas about what the cloud of these samples looks like but nothing really good yet.
Visualize ground water dynamics.
Something motivated by one of the research proposals we have read: archaeology, oil painting concepts for visualization, diffusion tensor visualization, bio-electric field visualization.
Build physical prototypes for true 3D visualization.
Represent uncertainty visually.
1. Better interfaces for choosing and modifying colors in graphics applications
2. Designing expert palettes and their interfaces
3. Color palette organization
4. Visualization of color spaces
Height functions are a very common form of data to deal with in various application domains: geography, hydrography, surface material properties, single view range imagery, etc.
Different approaches exist to map such graphs to feature maps, based on some geometric features of the height functions. These range from local (differential) to global (regional) approaches to capture features like: ridge/valley lines, to regional segmentation and watersheds.
Each method has its pros and cons and its favored applications.
The first project I have in mind is to implement a number of these approaches, from local to regional and find good ways to visualize the results and compare these.
The second project - might be included in the first - is to do the same kind of work for a method I developed a few years ago. It is derived from an old concept in geometry: the Indicatrix (of Dupin). Basically you take slice of the graph of varying size (notion of scale space introduced) and look at the local shape of the cut. For continuous (Morse) functions you have a small set of possibilities of interest. The interest of this method is that it alloes to merge local and regional methods in one framework. It also relates to topography in a more "comprehensive" way by defining valleys and ridges as elongated regions rather than lines on a surface. Flow fields can be derived to illustrate how the different labels (cut types) interact on any given height function. One difficulty is how to express the additional dimension of scale.
The above two methods are particularly relevant to vision (and geography, etc.).
The third project is to use the same approaches as above in the context of 3D surface this time. A height function can be introduced either regionally (view points) of locally (normal field).
I can describe a 4th project, if you need more ideas ... It would be about the volumetic and surfacic flowfields involved in the computation of 3D skeletons. But since I am still developping the algorithms to retrieve these, this might prove too early.
The algorithms for projects 1 and 2 exist though. For 1 there are many recent papers on the topic. For 2 I have my own set of algorithms (implemented under the Khoros environement, in C) and results.
I'll be happy to discuss any of the above in more details.