BackgroundResearch in cell biology is steadily contributing new knowledge about many aspects of physiological processes, both with respect to the involved molecular structures as well as their related function. Illustrations of the spatio-temporal development of such processes are not only used in biomedical education, but also can serve scientists as an additional platform for in-silico experiments.ResultsIn this paper, we contribute a new, three-level modeling approach to illustrate physiological processes from the class of polymerization at different time scales. We integrate physical and empirical modeling, according to which approach best suits the different involved levels of detail, and we additionally enable a form of interactive steering, while the process is illustrated. We demonstrate the suitability of our approach in the context of several polymerization processes and report from a first evaluation with domain experts.ConclusionWe conclude that our approach provides a new, hybrid modeling approach for illustrating the process of emergence in physiology, embedded in a densely filled environment. Our approach of a complementary fusion of three systems combines the strong points from the different modeling approaches and is capable to bridge different spatial and temporal scales.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2105-15-345) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The study of spatial data ensembles leads to substantial visualization challenges in a variety of applications. In this paper, we present a model for comparative visualization that supports the design of according ensemble visualization solutions by partial automation. We focus on applications, where the user is interested in preserving selected spatial data characteristics of the data as much as possible-even when many ensemble members should be jointly studied using comparative visualization. In our model, we separate the design challenge into a minimal set of user-specified parameters and an optimization component for the automatic configuration of the remaining design variables. We provide an illustrated formal description of our model and exemplify our approach in the context of several application examples from different domains in order to demonstrate its generality within the class of comparative visualization problems for spatial data ensembles.

Combining elements of biology, chemistry, physics, and medicine, the science of human physiology is complex and multifaceted. In this report, we offer a broad and multiscale perspective on key developments and challenges in visualization for physiology. Our literature search process combined standard methods with a state-of-the-art visual analysis search tool to identify surveys and representative individual approaches for physiology. Our resulting taxonomy sorts literature on two levels. The first level categorizes literature according to organizational complexity and ranges from molecule to organ. A second level identifies any of three high-level visualization tasks within a given work: exploration, analysis, and communication. The findings of this report may be used by visualization researchers to understand the overarching trends, challenges, and opportunities in visualization for physiology and to provide a foundation for discussion and future research directions in this area. CCS Concepts• Applied computing → Life and medical sciences; • Human-centered computing → Visualization;

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