Browsing by Author "Mostafa, Ahmed E."

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    Designing NeuroSimVR: A Stereoscopic Virtual Reality Spine Surgery Simulator
    (2017-11-01) Mostafa, Ahmed E.; Ryu, Won Hyung A.; Chan, Sonny; Takashima, Kazuki; Kopp, Gail; Costa Sousa, Mario; Sharlin, Ehud
    This paper contributes NeuroSimVR, a stereoscopic virtual reality spine surgery simulator that allows novice surgeons to learn and practice a spinal pedicle screw insertion (PSI) procedure using simplified interaction capabilities and 3D haptic user interfaces. By collaborating with medical experts and following an iterative approach, we provide characterization of the PSI task, and derive requirements for applying this procedure in a 3D immersive interactive simulation system. We describe how these requirements were realized in our NeuroSimVR prototype, and outline the educational benefits of our 3D interactive system for training the PSI procedure. We conclude the paper with the results of a preliminary evaluation of NeuroSimVR and reflect on our interface benefits and limitations.
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    PetroVis & FractVis: Interactive Visual Exploration of High-dimensional Oil and Gas Data
    (2013-07-10) Mostafa, Ahmed E.; Costa Sousa, Mário; Sharlin, Ehud
    Many processes within the oil and gas domain deal with ‘big data’–large sets of multidimensional data. Effectively analyzing these data sets is crucial to understanding the structure and the behaviour of oil and gas fields, and to the optimization of hydrocarbons production. However, experts face many challenges while attempting to analyze these data sets due to their high dimensionality, the inherent uncertainty of the data, and the lack of effective visual analytic interactive tools. In this thesis, we attempt to look for new ways to support domain experts in interpreting high dimensional oil and gas data. For the exploration we designed, implemented and evaluated two new interactive visualization tools: FractVis and PetroVis. Our design efforts involved characterization of two oil and gas domain case studies, namely: microseismic monitoring (in the design of FractVis) and petrographic analysis (in the design of PetroVis). For each of the case studies, we outline the necessary tasks, needs, and the challenges faced by the domain experts. By closely collaborating with domain experts we iteratively designed, implemented, and evaluated the two interactive novel visualization systems to simplify the exploration of high dimensional domain data. FractVis is a visualization tool aimed at supporting the visual analysis and exploration of the microseismic monitoring data. It combines, extends, and synchronizes parallel coordinates representation with other visualizations and interactions in order to facilitate the visual correlation of the data attributes. FractVis was further expanded by integrating new proxemic interaction and an interactive painting metaphor to simplify navigation and manipulation of the 3D microseismic data. The findings of our preliminary evaluation of FractVis suggest that the tool can provide insight regarding the simplification of the correlation of the microseismic data attributes, as detailed in the thesis. PetroVis is a novel interactive visualization system developed for exploring petrographic data. PetroVis integrates interactive visualization elements with domain-specific statistical features, to simplify the analysis process which involves (manual) validation of the automatic clustering of the data. The experts focus-group evaluation of PetroVis provided insight into the usefulness of the tool in simplifying the analysis of petrographic data clusters. We conclude this thesis by presenting a set of design heuristics, reflecting on lessons we have learned while designing FractVis and PetroVis, with the hope of aiding and guiding future research that targets visual exploration of high dimensional oil and gas data.