@misc{RosanwoPetzProhaskaetal.2008, author = {Rosanwo, Olufemi and Petz, Christoph and Prohaska, Steffen and Hotz, Ingrid and Hege, Hans-Christian}, title = {Dual Streamline Seeding - Method and Implementation}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-11032}, number = {08-49}, year = {2008}, abstract = {This work introduces a novel streamline seeding technique based on dual streamlines that are orthogonal to the vector field, instead of tangential. The greedy algorithm presented here produces a net of orthogonal streamlines that is iteratively refined resulting in good domain coverage and a high degree of continuity and uniformity. The algorithm is easy to implement and efficient, and it naturally extends to curved surfaces.}, language = {en} } @misc{ClasenPaarProhaska2011, author = {Clasen, Malte and Paar, Philip and Prohaska, Steffen}, title = {Level of Detail for Trees Using Clustered Ellipsoids}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-14251}, number = {11-41}, year = {2011}, abstract = {We present a level of detail method for trees based on ellipsoids and lines. We leverage the Expectation Maximization algorithm with a Gaussian Mixture Model to create a hierarchy of high-quality leaf clusterings, while the branches are simplified using agglomerative bottom-up clustering to preserve the connectivity. The simplification runs in a preprocessing step and requires no human interaction. For a fly by over and through a scene of 10k trees, our method renders on average at 40 ms/frame, up to 6 times faster than billboard clouds with comparable artifacts.}, language = {en} } @misc{KlindtBaumProhaskaetal.2013, author = {Klindt, Marco and Baum, Daniel and Prohaska, Steffen and Hege, Hans-Christian}, title = {iCon.text - a customizable iPad app for kiosk applications in museum exhibitions}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-17731}, year = {2013}, abstract = {We present iCon.text, a kiosk platform for the iPad centered around artefacts, whose content and layout can be tailored without programming skills for specific museum exhibitions. The central metaphor to access information is a virtual postcard with one front and a customizable number of back sides that provide details about exhibits to museum visitors in textual and image form. Back sides can link to others cards. Access to these postcards is possible through one or more navigation views that can be navigated to from a navigation bar. The entry point to the application is designed as a multitouch interactive pile of cards in a playful manner that allows visitors of any age an easy approach to the presentation and interaction metaphor. To directly access a certain postcard, a mosaic view can be uitilized to provide an overview about all available exhibits. A category view groups postcards into themes. Locating artefacts on a zoomable map or exhibition floor plan allows for conveying information about spatial contexts between different objects and their location. Furthermore, contexts can be illustrated with a two stage view comprising an overview and corresponding detail views to provide further insights into the spatial, temporal, and thematic contexts of artefacts. The application scaffolding allows the design of bilingual presentations to support exhibitions with an international audience. The logo of the presenting institution or exhibition can be incorporated to display the the kiosk's corporate design branding and to access an imprint or further informations. Usage is logged into files to provide a basis for extracting statistical information about the usage. The details about the exhibits are presented as images and as such impose no limit to the design choices made by the content provider or exhibition designer. The application (enhanced with a panoramic view) has been integrated successfully into a large special exhibition about the ancient city of Pergamon 2011/2012 at the Pergamon Museum Berlin within the interdisciplinary project "Berlin Sculpture Network".}, language = {en} } @misc{HombergBaumWiebeletal.2013, author = {Homberg, Ulrike and Baum, Daniel and Wiebel, Alexander and Prohaska, Steffen and Hege, Hans-Christian}, title = {Definition, Extraction, and Validation of Pore Structures in Porous Materials}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-42510}, year = {2013}, abstract = {An intuitive and sparse representation of the void space of porous materials supports the efficient analysis and visualization of interesting qualitative and quantitative parameters of such materials. We introduce definitions of the elements of this void space, here called pore space, based on its distance function, and present methods to extract these elements using the extremal structures of the distance function. The presented methods are implemented by an image processing pipeline that determines pore centers, pore paths and pore constrictions. These pore space elements build a graph that represents the topology of the pore space in a compact way. The representations we derive from μCT image data of realistic soil specimens enable the computation of many statistical parameters and, thus, provide a basis for further visual analysis and application-specific developments. We introduced parts of our pipeline in previous work. In this chapter, we present additional details and compare our results with the analytic computation of the pore space elements for a sphere packing in order to show the correctness of our graph computation.}, language = {en} } @misc{KnoetelBeckerScholtzetal.2018, author = {Kn{\"o}tel, David and Becker, Carola and Scholtz, Gerhard and Baum, Daniel}, title = {Global and Local Mesh Morphing for Complex Biological Objects from microCT Data}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.2312/vcbm.20181243}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-70618}, year = {2018}, abstract = {We show how biologically coherent mesh models of animals can be created from μCT data to generate artificial yet naturally looking intermediate objects. The whole pipeline of processing algorithms is presented, starting from generating topologically equivalent surface meshes, followed by solving the correspondence problem, and, finally, creating a surface morphing. In this pipeline, we address all the challenges that are due to dealing with complex biological, non-isometric objects. For biological objects it is often particularly important to obtain deformations that look as realistic as possible. In addition, spatially non-uniform shape morphings that only change one part of the surface and keep the rest as stable as possible are of interest for evolutionary studies, since functional modules often change independently from one another. We use Poisson interpolation for this purpose and show that it is well suited to generate both global and local shape deformations.}, language = {en} } @misc{VincensWittHomberg2014, author = {Vincens, Eric and Witt, Karl Josef and Homberg, Ulrike}, title = {Approaches to Determine the Constriction Size Distribution for Understanding Filtration Phenomena in Granular Materials}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-43960}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Granular filters in hydraulically loaded earth structures constitute the ultimate barrier for the blockage of small particles moving through the structure regularly or along concentrated leaks. If filters are inefficient to block small particles several types of internal erosion may be initiated. A corresponding phenomenon appears during suffusion in a wide graded hydraulically loaded fill, when fine particles, embedded in the pore structure of a soil skeleton, are washed out. The cumulative constriction size distribution (CSD) is physically the key property that qualifies the soils retention capability as like a spatial acting sieve. Constrictions are defined as the narrowest sections of channels between larger volumes (pores) within the pore network of granular material and they are the main obstacles for a small particle to overcome when flowing along pathways. At least three different approaches are available to determine and compute the CSD, i.e. experimental, numerical and analytical methods. The purpose of this review is to present and discuss these methods pointing out their limits, advantages and significance related to internal erosion phenomena.}, language = {en} } @misc{BaumTitschack2016, author = {Baum, Daniel and Titschack, J{\"u}rgen}, title = {Cavity and Pore Segmentation in 3D Images with Ambient Occlusion}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-59151}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Many natural objects contain pores and cavities that are filled with the same material that also surrounds the object. When such objects are imaged using, for example, computed tomography, the pores and cavities cannot be distinguished from the surrounding material by considering gray values and texture properties of the image. In this case, morphological operations are often used to fill the inner region. This is efficient, if the pore and cavity structures are small compared to the overall size of the object and if the object's shape is mainly convex. If this is not the case, the segmentation might be very difficult and may result in a lot of noise. We propose the usage of ambient occlusion for the segmentation of pores and cavities. One nice property of ambient occlusion is that it generates smooth scalar fields. Due to this smoothness property, a segmentation based on those fields will result in smooth boundaries at the pore and cavity openings. This is often desired, particularly when dealing with natural objects.}, language = {en} } @misc{LindowBaumHege2018, author = {Lindow, Norbert and Baum, Daniel and Hege, Hans-Christian}, title = {Atomic Accessibility Radii for Molecular Dynamics Analysis}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-68468}, year = {2018}, abstract = {In molecular structure analysis and visualization, the molecule's atoms are often modeled as hard spheres parametrized by their positions and radii. While the atom positions result from experiments or molecular simulations, for the radii typically values are taken from literature. Most often, van der Waals (vdW) radii are used, for which diverse values exist. As a consequence, different visualization and analysis tools use different atomic radii, and the analyses are less objective than often believed. Furthermore, for the geometric accessibility analysis of molecular structures, vdW radii are not well suited. The reason is that during the molecular dynamics simulation, depending on the force field and the kinetic energy in the system, non-bonded atoms can come so close to each other that their vdW spheres intersect. In this paper, we introduce a new kind of atomic radius, called atomic accessibility radius', that better characterizes the accessibility of an atom in a given molecular trajectory. The new radii reflect the movement possibilities of atoms in the simulated physical system. They are computed by solving a linear program that maximizes the radii of the atoms under the constraint that non-bonded spheres do not intersect in the considered molecular trajectory. Using this data-driven approach, the actual accessibility of atoms can be visualized more precisely.}, language = {en} } @misc{SchotteChaumelDeanetal.2020, author = {Schotte, Merlind and Chaumel, J{\´u}lia and Dean, Mason N. and Baum, Daniel}, title = {Image analysis pipeline for segmentation of a biological porosity network, the lacuno-canalicular system in stingray tesserae}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-78237}, year = {2020}, abstract = {A prerequisite for many analysis tasks in modern comparative biology is the segmentation of 3-dimensional (3D) images of the specimens being investigated (e.g. from microCT data). Depending on the specific imaging technique that was used to acquire the images and on the image resolution, different segmentation tools will be required. While some standard tools exist that can often be applied for specific subtasks, building whole processing pipelines solely from standard tools is often difficult. Some tasks may even necessitate the implementation of manual interaction tools to achieve a quality that is sufficient for the subsequent analysis. In this work, we present a pipeline of segmentation tools that can be used for the semi-automatic segmentation and quantitative analysis of voids in tissue (i.e. internal structural porosity). We use this pipeline to analyze lacuno-canalicular networks in stingray tesserae from 3D images acquired with synchrotron microCT. * The first step of this processing pipeline, the segmentation of the tesserae, was performed using standard marker-based watershed segmentation. The efficient processing of the next two steps, that is, the segmentation of all lacunae spaces belonging to a specific tessera and the separation of these spaces into individual lacunae required modern, recently developed tools. * For proofreading, we developed a graph-based interactive method that allowed us to quickly split lacunae that were accidentally merged, and to merge lacunae that were wrongly split. * Finally, the tesserae and their corresponding lacunae were subdivided into anatomical regions of interest (structural wedges) using a semi- manual approach.}, language = {en} } @misc{TitschackBaumMatsuyamaetal.2018, author = {Titschack, J{\"u}rgen and Baum, Daniel and Matsuyama, Kei and Boos, Karin and F{\"a}rber, Claudia and Kahl, Wolf-Achim and Ehrig, Karsten and Meinel, Dietmar and Soriano, Carmen and Stock, Stuart R.}, title = {Ambient occlusion - a powerful algorithm to segment shell and skeletal intrapores in computed tomography data}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-67982}, year = {2018}, abstract = {During the last decades, X-ray (micro-)computed tomography has gained increasing attention for the description of porous skeletal and shell structures of various organism groups. However, their quantitative analysis is often hampered by the difficulty to discriminate cavities and pores within the object from the surrounding region. Herein, we test the ambient occlusion (AO) algorithm and newly implemented optimisations for the segmentation of cavities (implemented in the software Amira). The segmentation accuracy is evaluated as a function of (i) changes in the ray length input variable, and (ii) the usage of AO (scalar) field and other AO-derived (scalar) fields. The results clearly indicate that the AO field itself outperforms all other AO-derived fields in terms of segmentation accuracy and robustness against variations in the ray length input variable. The newly implemented optimisations improved the AO field-based segmentation only slightly, while the segmentations based on the AO-derived fields improved considerably. Additionally, we evaluated the potential of the AO field and AO-derived fields for the separation and classification of cavities as well as skeletal structures by comparing them with commonly used distance-map-based segmentations. For this, we tested the zooid separation within a bryozoan colony, the stereom classification of an ophiuroid tooth, the separation of bioerosion traces within a marble block and the calice (central cavity)-pore separation within a dendrophyllid coral. The obtained results clearly indicate that the ideal input field depends on the three-dimensional morphology of the object of interest. The segmentations based on the AO-derived fields often provided cavity separations and skeleton classifications that were superior to or impossible to obtain with commonly used distance- map-based segmentations. The combined usage of various AO-derived fields by supervised or unsupervised segmentation algorithms might provide a promising target for future research to further improve the results for this kind of high-end data segmentation and classification. Furthermore, the application of the developed segmentation algorithm is not restricted to X-ray (micro-)computed tomographic data but may potentially be useful for the segmentation of 3D volume data from other sources.}, language = {en} } @misc{BaumWeaverZlotnikovetal.2019, author = {Baum, Daniel and Weaver, James C. and Zlotnikov, Igor and Kn{\"o}tel, David and Tomholt, Lara and Dean, Mason N.}, title = {High-Throughput Segmentation of Tiled Biological Structures using Random-Walk Distance Transforms}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-73841}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Various 3D imaging techniques are routinely used to examine biological materials, the results of which are usually a stack of grayscale images. In order to quantify structural aspects of the biological materials, however, they must first be extracted from the dataset in a process called segmentation. If the individual structures to be extracted are in contact or very close to each other, distance-based segmentation methods utilizing the Euclidean distance transform are commonly employed. Major disadvantages of the Euclidean distance transform, however, are its susceptibility to noise (very common in biological data), which often leads to incorrect segmentations (i.e. poor separation of objects of interest), and its limitation of being only effective for roundish objects. In the present work, we propose an alternative distance transform method, the random-walk distance transform, and demonstrate its effectiveness in high-throughput segmentation of three microCT datasets of biological tilings (i.e. structures composed of a large number of similar repeating units). In contrast to the Euclidean distance transform, this random-walk approach represents the global, rather than the local, geometric character of the objects to be segmented and, thus, is less susceptible to noise. In addition, it is directly applicable to structures with anisotropic shape characteristics. Using three case studies—stingray tessellated cartilage, starfish dermal endoskeleton, and the prismatic layer of bivalve mollusc shell—we provide a typical workflow for the segmentation of tiled structures, describe core image processing concepts that are underused in biological research, and show that for each study system, large amounts of biologically-relevant data can be rapidly segmented, visualized and analyzed.}, language = {en} } @misc{HoerthBaumKnoeteletal.2015, author = {Hoerth, Rebecca M. and Baum, Daniel and Kn{\"o}tel, David and Prohaska, Steffen and Willie, Bettina M. and Duda, Georg and Hege, Hans-Christian and Fratzl, Peter and Wagermaier, Wolfgang}, title = {Registering 2D and 3D Imaging Data of Bone during Healing}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-53426}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Purpose/Aims of the Study: Bone's hierarchical structure can be visualized using a variety of methods. Many techniques, such as light and electron microscopy generate two-dimensional (2D) images, while micro computed tomography (μCT) allows a direct representation of the three-dimensional (3D) structure. In addition, different methods provide complementary structural information, such as the arrangement of organic or inorganic compounds. The overall aim of the present study is to answer bone research questions by linking information of different 2D and 3D imaging techniques. A great challenge in combining different methods arises from the fact that they usually reflect different characteristics of the real structure. Materials and Methods: We investigated bone during healing by means of μCT and a couple of 2D methods. Backscattered electron images were used to qualitatively evaluate the tissue's calcium content and served as a position map for other experimental data. Nanoindentation and X-ray scattering experiments were performed to visualize mechanical and structural properties. Results: We present an approach for the registration of 2D data in a 3D μCT reference frame, where scanning electron microscopies serve as a methodic link. Backscattered electron images are perfectly suited for registration into μCT reference frames, since both show structures based on the same physical principles. We introduce specific registration tools that have been developed to perform the registration process in a semi-automatic way. Conclusions: By applying this routine, we were able to exactly locate structural information (e.g. mineral particle properties) in the 3D bone volume. In bone healing studies this will help to better understand basic formation, remodeling and mineralization processes.}, language = {en} } @misc{WeberTranfieldHoeoegetal.2014, author = {Weber, Britta and Tranfield, Erin M. and H{\"o}{\"o}g, Johanna L. and Baum, Daniel and Antony, Claude and Hyman, Tony and Verbavatz, Jean-Marc and Prohaska, Steffen}, title = {Automated stitching of microtubule centerlines across serial electron tomograms}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0113222}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-52958}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Tracing microtubule centerlines in serial section electron tomography requires microtubules to be stitched across sections, that is lines from different sections need to be aligned, endpoints need to be matched at section boundaries to establish a correspondence between neighboring sections, and corresponding lines need to be connected across multiple sections. We present computational methods for these tasks: 1) An initial alignment is computed using a distance compatibility graph. 2) A fine alignment is then computed with a probabilistic variant of the iterative closest points algorithm, which we extended to handle the orientation of lines by introducing a periodic random variable to the probabilistic formulation. 3) Endpoint correspondence is established by formulating a matching problem in terms of a Markov random field and computing the best matching with belief propagation. Belief propagation is not generally guaranteed to converge to a minimum. We show how convergence can be achieved, nonetheless, with minimal manual input. In addition to stitching microtubule centerlines, the correspondence is also applied to transform and merge the electron tomograms. We applied the proposed methods to samples from the mitotic spindle in C. elegans, the meiotic spindle in X. laevis, and sub-pellicular microtubule arrays in T. brucei. The methods were able to stitch microtubules across section boundaries in good agreement with experts' opinions for the spindle samples. Results, however, were not satisfactory for the microtubule arrays. For certain experiments, such as an analysis of the spindle, the proposed methods can replace manual expert tracing and thus enable the analysis of microtubules over long distances with reasonable manual effort.}, language = {en} }