Visualization-Driven Illumination for Density Plots

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chen, Xin, Wang, Yunhai, Bao, Huaiwei, Lu, Kecheng, Jo, Jaemin, Fu, Chi-Wing, Fekete, Jean-Daniel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chen, Xin
Wang, Yunhai
Bao, Huaiwei
Lu, Kecheng
Jo, Jaemin
Fu, Chi-Wing
Fekete, Jean-Daniel
author_facet Chen, Xin
Wang, Yunhai
Bao, Huaiwei
Lu, Kecheng
Jo, Jaemin
Fu, Chi-Wing
Fekete, Jean-Daniel
contents We present a novel visualization-driven illumination model for density plots, a new technique to enhance density plots by effectively revealing the detailed structures in high- and medium-density regions and outliers in low-density regions, while avoiding artifacts in the density field's colors. When visualizing large and dense discrete point samples, scatterplots and dot density maps often suffer from overplotting, and density plots are commonly employed to provide aggregated views while revealing underlying structures. Yet, in such density plots, existing illumination models may produce color distortion and hide details in low-density regions, making it challenging to look up density values, compare them, and find outliers. The key novelty in this work includes (i) a visualization-driven illumination model that inherently supports density-plot-specific analysis tasks and (ii) a new image composition technique to reduce the interference between the image shading and the color-encoded density values. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique, we conducted a quantitative study, an empirical evaluation of our technique in a controlled study, and two case studies, exploring twelve datasets with up to two million data point samples.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_17265
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Visualization-Driven Illumination for Density Plots
Chen, Xin
Wang, Yunhai
Bao, Huaiwei
Lu, Kecheng
Jo, Jaemin
Fu, Chi-Wing
Fekete, Jean-Daniel
Graphics
Human-Computer Interaction
We present a novel visualization-driven illumination model for density plots, a new technique to enhance density plots by effectively revealing the detailed structures in high- and medium-density regions and outliers in low-density regions, while avoiding artifacts in the density field's colors. When visualizing large and dense discrete point samples, scatterplots and dot density maps often suffer from overplotting, and density plots are commonly employed to provide aggregated views while revealing underlying structures. Yet, in such density plots, existing illumination models may produce color distortion and hide details in low-density regions, making it challenging to look up density values, compare them, and find outliers. The key novelty in this work includes (i) a visualization-driven illumination model that inherently supports density-plot-specific analysis tasks and (ii) a new image composition technique to reduce the interference between the image shading and the color-encoded density values. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique, we conducted a quantitative study, an empirical evaluation of our technique in a controlled study, and two case studies, exploring twelve datasets with up to two million data point samples.
title Visualization-Driven Illumination for Density Plots
topic Graphics
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17265