Visualisation de champs scalaires guidée par la topologie. (Topology driven visualization of complex data)

Critical points of a scalar function (minima, saddle points and maxima) are important features to characterize large scalar datasets, like topographic data. But the acquisition of such datasets introduces noise in the values. Many critical points are caused by the noise, so there is a need to delete these extra critical points. The Morse-Smale complex is a mathematical object which is studied in the domain of Visualization because it allows to simplify scalar functions while keeping the most important critical points of the studied function and the links between them. We propose in this dissertation a method to construct a function which corresponds to a Morse-Smale complex defined on R2 after the suppression of pairs of critical points. Firstly, we propose a method which defines a monotone surface (a surface without critical points).This surface interpolates function values at a grid points. Furthermore, it is composed of a set of triangular cubic Bézier patches which define a C1 continuous surface. We give sufficient conditions on the function values at the grid points and on the partial derivatives at the grid points so that the surface is increasing in the (x + y) direction. It is not easy to compute partial derivatives values which respect these conditions. That’s why we introduce two algorithms : the first modifies the partial derivatives values on input such that they respect the conditions and the second computes these values from the function values at the grid points. Then, we describe a reconstruction method of scalar field from simplified Morse-Smale complexes. We begin by approximating the 1-cells of the complex (which are the links between the critical points, described by polylines) by curves composed of cubic Bézier curves. We then describe how our monotone interpolant of values at grid points is used to construct monotone surfaces which interpolate the curves we computed before. Furthermore, we show that the function we compute contains all the critical points of the simplified Morse-Smale complex and has no others.