Connecting Time-Oriented Data and Information to a Coherent Interactive Visualization

Ragnar Bade, Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Department of Simulation and Graphics, Magdeburg, Germany
Silvia Miksch, Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Software Technology and Interactive System, Vienna, Austria
Stefan Schlechtweg, Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Department of Simulation and Graphics, Magdeburg, Germany

In modern intensive care units (ICUs), the medical staff has to monitor a huge amount of high-dimensional and time-oriented data, which needs to be visualized user- and task-specifically to ease diagnosis and treatment planning. Available visual representations, like diagrams or charts neglect the implicit information as well as a-priory or associated knowledge about the data and its meaning (e.g., 38.5°C (101.3°F) is moderate fever and 41°C (105.8°F) is critical fever). Another challenge is to provide appropriate interaction techniques to explore and navigate the data and its temporal dimensions. In this context one major challenge is to connect time-oriented data and information to a coherent interactive visualization.

The goal of this project is to

• Present different interactive visualization techniques which enable the users to reveal the data at several levels of detail and abstraction, ranging from a broad overview to the fine structure.

• Introduce a time visualization and navigation technique that connects overview+detail, pan+zoom, and focus+context features to one powerful time-browser.

Bade, Ragnar; Schlechtweg, Stefan; Miksch, Silvia: Connecting Time-Oriented Data and Information to a Coherent Interactive Visualization, in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI-2004), ACM Press, pp. 105-112, 2004.

Bade, Ragnar: Methoden zur Visualisierung von und Interaktion in zeitbasierten Patientendaten und Behandlungsplänen Master thesis, Department of Simulation and Graphics, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg, Germany, 2002.

• LifeLines for Visualizing Patient Records at Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL), University of Maryland
• Graphical Summary of Patient Status by Seth M. Powsner and Edward R. Tufte

• http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~rbade/midgaard/