Extended Pie Menus for Immersive Virtual Environments

Figure 1: VisNEST's control view allows users to inspect neural activity linked to a geometric representation of a macaque brain. Textual annotations show anatomical area designators (right). By selecting a brain area, users may access the corresponding raster plot (top left) and connectivity of populations (bottom left). ABSTRACTThe aim of computational neuroscience is to gain insight into the dynamics and functionality of the nervous system by means of modeling and simulation. Current research leverages the power of High Performance Computing facilities to enable multi-scale simulations capturing both low-level neural activity and large-scale interactions between brain regions. In this paper, we describe an interactive analysis tool that enables neuroscientists to explore data from such simulations. One of the driving challenges behind this work is the integration of macroscopic data at the level of brain regions with microscopic simulation results, such as the activity of individual neurons. While researchers validate their findings mainly by visualizing these data in a non-interactive fashion, state-of-the-art visualizations, tailored to the scientific question yet sufficiently general to accommodate different types of models, enable such analyses to be performed more efficiently. This work describes several visualization designs, conceived in close collaboration with domain experts, for the analysis of network models. We primarily focus on the exploration of neural activity data, inspecting connectivity of brain regions and populations, and visualizing activity flux across regions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in a case study conducted with domain experts.

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“…For general system control, we decided to use extended pie menus [5]. Several visualization properties, e.g.…”

Section: Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

VisNEST — Interactive analysis of neural activity data

Nowke

Schmidt²,

Albada³

et al. 2013

2013 IEEE Symposium on Biological Data Visualization (BioVis)

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“…Context menus previously played a central role in granting access to the functionality of the application and were realized as Extended Pie Menus [5]. These were replaced by Mobile Menus, thereby making the application a suitable test case for their evaluation (see Figure 1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We gathered quantitative data by performing time and precision measurements and collected qualitative data by using standard questionnaires and free comments of the participants. To this end, we compared Mobile Menus to Extended Pie Menus [5] that were the default way of controlling the VATSS application beforehand.…”

Section: User Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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An evaluation of a smart-phone-based menu system for immersive virtual environments

Gebhardt

Pick

Oster

et al. 2014

2014 IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces (3DUI)

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System control is a crucial task for many virtual reality applications and can be realized in a broad variety of ways, whereat the most common way is the use of graphical menus. These are often implemented as part of the virtual environment, but can also be displayed on mobile devices. Until now, many systems and studies have been published on using mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) to realize such menu systems. However, most of these systems have been proposed way before smartphones existed and evolved to everyday companions for many people. Thus, it is worthwhile to evaluate the applicability of modern smartphones as carrier of menu systems for immersive virtual environments. To do so, we implemented a platform-independent menu system for smartphones and evaluated it in two different ways. First, we performed an expert review in order to identify potential design flaws and to test the applicability of the approach for demonstrations of VR applications from a demonstrator's point of view. Second, we conducted a user study with 21 participants to test user acceptance of the menu system. The results of the two studies were contradictory: while experts appreciated the system very much, user acceptance was lower than expected. From these results we could draw conclusions on how smartphones should be used to realize system control in virtual environments and we could identify connecting factors for future research on the topic. *

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“…To this end, we decided to use extended pie menus as described by Gebhardt et al (2013). They scale to 2D and 3D environments and can interactively be moved in the scene while staying aligned to the user's orientation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactive 3D visualization of structural changes in the brain of a person with corticobasal syndrome

Hänel

Pieperhoff

Hentschel

et al. 2014

Front. Neuroinform.

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The visualization of the progression of brain tissue loss in neurodegenerative diseases like corticobasal syndrome (CBS) can provide not only information about the localization and distribution of the volume loss, but also helps to understand the course and the causes of this neurodegenerative disorder. The visualization of such medical imaging data is often based on 2D sections, because they show both internal and external structures in one image. Spatial information, however, is lost. 3D visualization of imaging data is capable to solve this problem, but it faces the difficulty that more internally located structures may be occluded by structures near the surface. Here, we present an application with two designs for the 3D visualization of the human brain to address these challenges. In the first design, brain anatomy is displayed semi-transparently; it is supplemented by an anatomical section and cortical areas for spatial orientation, and the volumetric data of volume loss. The second design is guided by the principle of importance-driven volume rendering: A direct line-of-sight to the relevant structures in the deeper parts of the brain is provided by cutting out a frustum-like piece of brain tissue. The application was developed to run in both, standard desktop environments and in immersive virtual reality environments with stereoscopic viewing for improving the depth perception. We conclude, that the presented application facilitates the perception of the extent of brain degeneration with respect to its localization and affected regions.

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Extended Pie Menus for Immersive Virtual Environments

Cited by 50 publications

References 15 publications

VisNEST — Interactive analysis of neural activity data

VisNEST — Interactive analysis of neural activity data

An evaluation of a smart-phone-based menu system for immersive virtual environments

Interactive 3D visualization of structural changes in the brain of a person with corticobasal syndrome

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Extended Pie Menus for Immersive Virtual Environments

Cited by 50 publications

References 15 publications

VisNEST &#x2014; Interactive analysis of neural activity data

VisNEST &#x2014; Interactive analysis of neural activity data

An evaluation of a smart-phone-based menu system for immersive virtual environments

Interactive 3D visualization of structural changes in the brain of a person with corticobasal syndrome

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Product

Resources

About

VisNEST — Interactive analysis of neural activity data

VisNEST — Interactive analysis of neural activity data