Particle Flurries is an interactive approach to 3 D flow visualization

opsis of all flow features simultaneously. Good examples of 2D synoptic visualizations are weather maps from both TV news reports and online Web pages. The human visual system is adept at finding patterns within larger contexts, and we hypothesize that synoptic visualization methods will help users find unexpected features more quickly and thus speed the understanding of complex 3D time-varying flows. Particle Flurries (PF) is our effort toward a synoptic visualization of complex pulsatile 3D flow. Our group’s ongoing study of the correlation between arterial blood flow and lesions as well as our research into the mechanics, dynamics, and evolution of animal flight (described in the “Visualization in Biomedical Research” sidebar) motivated this work. Our approach was inspired by videos of particles animating through a vessel. The video’s flat view raised questions about the precise behavior of the complex 3D flow, such as how particles move in the third dimension and what their movement is relative to the vessel wall. An immersive viewing environment promised to more effectively display complex 3D structures, thus our primary challenge was to design an effective 3D visualization based on the motivational 2D visualization style. PF tries to satisfy four goals: