Gryphon-dti

Based on our many discussions with domain users, we have recognized that domain scientists want a visualization of their own data to be designed and built by themselves. In the broad data visualization scenarios, that Excel and Flash are still the most popular visualization tools even today after long existence is probably attributed to their capabilities of empowering users to design their own visualizations. So in a narrower scope, what if domain scientists with DTI visualizations have a tool that is so easy to maneuver that they can fully control the design elements and visual components to create whatever visualization they really want in mind? Enlightened by the design of ProtoVis and Processing in the information visualization community, I attempted a visualization language as the first tool of this kind for DTI visualizations and even, more broadly, for visualizations of 3D scientific data, which is also motivated by the needs of spatial explorations in 3D SciVis.