@phdthesis{Interrante:1996:ITC,
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author = {Victoria Interrante},
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title = {{I}llustrating {T}ransparency: {C}ommunicating the {3D} {S}hape of
{L}ayered {T}ransparent {S}urfaces via {T}exture},
abstract = {There are many applications in which transparency can be a useful
tool for displaying the outer surface of an object together with
underlying structures. The driving application for this research
is radiation therapy treatment planning, in which physicians need
to understand the volume distribution of radiation dose in the
context of patient anatomy. To effectively display data containing
multiple overlapping surfaces, the surfaces must be rendered in
such a way that they can simultaneously be seen and also seen
through. In computer-generated images, as in real life, however,
it is often difficult to adequately perceive the three-dimensional
shape of a plain transparent surface and to judge its relative
depth distance from underlying opaque objects. Inspired by the
ability of gifted artists to define a figure with just a few
strokes, I have explored methods for automatically generating a
small, stable set of intuitively meaningful lines that intend to
capture the essence of a surface’s shape. This dissertation
describes my investigations into the use of opaque texture lines
as an artistic device for enhancing the communication of the shape
and depth of an external transparent surface while only minimally
occluding underlying structure. I provide an overview of the role
of 3D visualization in radiation treatment planning and a survey
of shape and depth perception, focusing on aspects that may be
most crucial for conveying shape and depth information in
computer-generated images, and then motivate the use of two
specific types of shape-conveying surface markings: valley/ridge
lines, which may be useful for sketching the essential form of
certain surfaces, and distributed short strokes, oriented in the
direction of greatest normal curvature, which may meaningfully
convey the local shape of general surface patches. An experimental
paradigm is proposed for objectively measuring observers’ ability
to simultaneously see and see through a transparent surface, and
is used to demonstrate, in an experiment with five subjects, that
consistent performance improvements can be achieved, on a task
relevant to the needs of radiotherapy treatment planning and based
on images generated from actual clinical data, when opaque texture
lines are added to an otherwise plain transparent surface.},
school = {University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill},
localfile = {papers/Interrante.1996.ITC.pdf},
address = {USA},
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doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/238053},
year = {1996},
}
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