User Controlled Overviews of an Image Library:
The Visible Human Explorer
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 USA
+1-301-405-2725
{north, ben,
plaisant}@cs.umd.edu
ABSTRACT
This demonstration exhibits our Visible Human Explorer
user interface (figure 1) for remote access to the National
Library of Medicine's Visible Human digital image library. Users
can
visualize the library, browse contents, locate data of interest,
and
retrieve desired images. The interface presents a pair of
tightly coupled
views into the library data. The overview image provides a
global view of
the overall search space, and the preview image provides details
about high
resolution images available for retrieval. To explore, the user
sweeps the
views through the search space and receives smooth, rapid, visual
feedback
of contents. Desired images are automatically downloaded over
the internet
from the library. Library contents are indexed by meta-data
consisting of
automatically generated miniature visuals. The interface
software is
completely functional and freely available for public use on Sun
workstations, at:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hcil/Research/1995/vhe.html
.
KEYWORDS
Browsing, Digital Library, Image Database, Information
Exploration,
Information Retrieval, Internet, Medical Image, Remote Access,
User Interface,
Visualization.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chris North received a National Library of Medicine fellowship,
administered by
the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Additional
funding was
provided by a National Library of Medicine grant and National
Science Foundation
grant EEC 94-02384.
REFERENCES
- C. North and F. Korn.
Browsing Anatomical Image Databases: A Case Study of the
Visible Human.
Conf. Companion and Video Proc. of ACM CHI'96
Human Factors in Computing Systems Conf, 1996.
- C. North, B. Shneiderman, and C. Plaisant.
User Controlled Overviews of an Image Library: A Case Study
of the Visible Human.
Proc. of ACM Digital
Libraries '96 Conf,
ACM Press, 1996.
- C. North, B. Shneiderman, and C. Plaisant.
Visual Information Seeking in Digital Image Libraries: The
Visible Human Explorer.
Information in Images, Editor Glenn Becker, Thomson
Technology Labs, 1997.
Figure 1:
The Visible Human Explorer user interface, showing a
reconstructed
coronal section overview and an axial preview image of the upper
abdominal
region. Dragging sliders animates the cross-sections through the
body.
Click on this image for the full-size screen-shot (120K GIF).
Figure 2:
Our experimental Visible Human Volume Browser user interface
prototype,
showing an overview volume of the entire body and a detail volume
of the heart.
Arbitrary detail volumes are retrieved by manipulating a zoom box
in the overview.
To explore, users can push or pull each plane through the volumes
in real time.
Click on this image for the full-size screen-shot (130K GIF).
north@cs.umd.edu