Immersive visualization and interactive analysis of ground penetrating radar data

  • Authors:

  • Matthew R. Sgambati;Steven Koepnick;Daniel S. Coming;Nicholas Lancaster;Frederick C. Harris, Jr.

  • Affiliations:

  • Desert Research Institute;Desert Research Institute;Desert Research Institute;Desert Research Institute;Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno

  • Venue:
  • ISVC'11 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Advances in visual computing - Volume Part II
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Ground Penetrating Radar is a geophysical technique for obtaining information about sub-surface earth materials. Geologists use the data collected to obtain a view of terrain underground. This data is typically viewed using a desktop interface where the user usually interacts using a keyboard and mouse. Visualizing the data in a slice by slice 2D format can be difficult to interpret. Instead, we created a program for an immersive visualization environment that uses tracked input devices. This is done using real-time, stereoscopic, perspective-corrected, slice-based volume rendering. To aid with the visualization the user can modify the display of the volume using integrated tools, such as transfer functions, lighting, and color maps. Users are also given data analysis tools to take application-specific measurements such as dip, strike, other angles, and distances in 3D. Compared to typical desktop interface interactions, the 6-degree of freedom user interface provided by the immersive visualization environment makes it notably easier to perform the application-specific measurements.