Colloq Abstract - Rosen

Jan 22, 2016

11am Mountain


Paul Rosen

University of South Florida

 

Opportunities to Advance visualization capabilities for ALMA Data Cubes through Topological Data Analysis

The availability of large data cubes produced by telescopes like the ALMA is leading to new data and visual analysis challenges as scientists explore and compare data cubes at ever increasing resolutions. Current analysis and visualization tools are ill prepared for the onslaught of data. The problem with these tools is not just a technical one but also a methodological one. Most approaches offload the majority of the analytic tasks to the human cognitive system--this does not scale well given limited human input bandwidth. The challenge quickly becomes apparent: how can we design effective visual tools for exploring the full range of complex features present in large ALMA data cubes?

In this talk, I will discuss our new project addressing this problem. By using the notion of a contour tree from topological data analysis (TDA), the overall data load can be reduced in a mathematically robust manner. The contour tree provides a meaningful summarization of the structure that can then be easily simplified to reduce complexity or remove noise from the data. Finally, new visualizations will be designed to investigate the data and communicate the findings in a salient way--a process relying on the direct input of astronomers. From this talk, we hope to expand this dialog.

 

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