Scientific visualization is an interdisciplinary branch of science concerned with the visualization of scientific phenomena. It is also considered a subset of computer graphics, a branch of computer science. The purpose of scientific visualization is to graphically illustrate scientific data to enable scientists to understand, illustrate, and glean insight from their data. Research into how people read and misread various types of visualizations is helping to determine what types and features of visualizations are most understandable and effective in conveying information.
The Visualization Toolkit (VTK) is an open-source software system for 3D computer graphics, image processing and scientific visualization.
MayaVi is a scientific data visualizer written in Python, which uses VTK and provides a GUI via Tkinter. MayaVi was developed by Prabhu Ramachandran, is free and distributed under the BSD License. It is cross-platform and runs on any platform where both Python and VTK are available. MayaVi is pronounced as a single name, "Ma-ya-vee", meaning "magical" in Sanskrit. The code of MayaVi has nothing in common with that of Autodesk Maya or the Vi text editor.
GenePattern is a freely available computational biology open-source software package originally created and developed at the Broad Institute for the analysis of genomic data. Designed to enable researchers to develop, capture, and reproduce genomic analysis methodologies, GenePattern was first released in 2004. GenePattern is currently developed at the University of California, San Diego.
ParaView is an open-source multiple-platform application for interactive, scientific visualization. It has a client–server architecture to facilitate remote visualization of datasets, and generates level of detail (LOD) models to maintain interactive frame rates for large datasets. It is an application built on top of the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) libraries. ParaView is an application designed for data parallelism on shared-memory or distributed-memory multicomputers and clusters. It can also be run as a single-computer application.
VisIt is an open-source interactive parallel visualization and graphical analysis tool for viewing scientific data. It can be used to visualize scalar and vector fields defined on 2D and 3D structured and unstructured meshes. VisIt was designed to handle very large data set sizes in the terascale range and yet can also handle small data sets in the kilobyte range.
Kepler is a free software system for designing, executing, reusing, evolving, archiving, and sharing scientific workflows. Kepler's facilities provide process and data monitoring, provenance information, and high-speed data movement. Workflows in general, and scientific workflows in particular, are directed graphs where the nodes represent discrete computational components, and the edges represent paths along which data and results can flow between components. In Kepler, the nodes are called 'Actors' and the edges are called 'channels'. Kepler includes a graphical user interface for composing workflows in a desktop environment, a runtime engine for executing workflows within the GUI and independently from a command-line, and a distributed computing option that allows workflow tasks to be distributed among compute nodes in a computer cluster or computing grid. The Kepler system principally targets the use of a workflow metaphor for organizing computational tasks that are directed towards particular scientific analysis and modeling goals. Thus, Kepler scientific workflows generally model the flow of data from one step to another in a series of computations that achieve some scientific goal.
UGENE is computer software for bioinformatics. It works on personal computer operating systems such as Windows, macOS, or Linux. It is released as free and open-source software, under a GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.
The LONI Pipeline is a free distributed system for designing, executing, monitoring and sharing scientific workflows on grid computing architectures. Pipeline allows users to connect and run any number of different software tools, and conveniently visualize and download the results.
The Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute is a permanent research institute at the University of Utah that focuses on the development of new scientific computing and visualization techniques, tools, and systems with primary applications to biomedical engineering. The SCI Institute is noted worldwide in the visualization community for contributions by faculty, alumni, and staff. Faculty are associated primarily with the School of Computing, Department of Bioengineering, Department of Mathematics, and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with auxiliary faculty in the Medical School and School of Architecture.
KNIME, the Konstanz Information Miner, is a free and open-source data analytics, reporting and integration platform. KNIME integrates various components for machine learning and data mining through its modular data pipelining "Building Blocks of Analytics" concept. A graphical user interface and use of JDBC allows assembly of nodes blending different data sources, including preprocessing, for modeling, data analysis and visualization without, or with only minimal, programming.
A scientific workflow system is a specialized form of a workflow management system designed specifically to compose and execute a series of computational or data manipulation steps, or workflow, in a scientific application.
GIMIAS is a workflow-oriented environment focused on biomedical image computing and simulation. The open-source framework is extensible through plug-ins and is focused on building research and clinical software prototypes. Gimias has been used to develop clinical prototypes in the fields of cardiac imaging and simulation, angiography imaging and simulation, and neurology
A bioinformatics workflow management system is a specialized form of workflow management system designed specifically to compose and execute a series of computational or data manipulation steps, or a workflow, that relate to bioinformatics.
Interactive Visual Analysis (IVA) is a set of techniques for combining the computational power of computers with the perceptive and cognitive capabilities of humans, in order to extract knowledge from large and complex datasets. The techniques rely heavily on user interaction and the human visual system, and exist in the intersection between visual analytics and big data. It is a branch of data visualization. IVA is a suitable technique for analyzing high-dimensional data that has a large number of data points, where simple graphing and non-interactive techniques give an insufficient understanding of the information.
Data lineage includes the data origin, what happens to it and where it moves over time. Data lineage gives visibility while greatly simplifying the ability to trace errors back to the root cause in a data analytics process.
Juliana Freire de Lima e Silva is a Brazilian computer scientist who works as a professor of computer science and engineering at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering. She is known for her research in information visualization, data provenance, and computerized assistance for scientific reproducibility.
Claudio Silva is a Brazilian American computer scientist and data scientist. He is a professor of computer science and engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, the head of disciplines at the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and affiliate faculty member at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He co-developed the open-source data-exploration system VisTrails with his wife Juliana Freire and many other collaborators. He is a former chair of the executive committee for the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Visualization and Graphics.
Nirvana was virtual object storage software developed and maintained by General Atomics.
Kwan-Liu Ma is an American computer scientist. He was born and grew up in Taipei, Taiwan and came to the United States pursuing advanced study in 1983. He is a distinguished professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. His research interests include visualization, computer graphics, human computer interaction, and high-performance computing.
