We present a half-day course to review several information theory applications for computer graphics and visualization. Information theory tools, widely used in scientific fields such as engineering, physics, genetics and neuroscience, are also emerging as useful transversal tools in computer graphics and related fields. We introduce the basic concepts of information theory and how they map into application areas. Application areas in computer graphics include viewpoint selection, mesh saliency, scene exploration, ambient occlusion, geometry simplification, radiosity, adaptive ray-tracing and shape descriptors. Application areas in visualization are view selection for volume data, flow visualization, ambient occlusion, time-varying volume visualization, transfer function definition, time-varying volume visualization, iso-surface similarity maps and quality metrics. The applications fall broadly into two categories: the mapping of the problem to an information channel - as in viewpoint applications - and the direct use of measures such as entropy, Kullback-Leibler distance, Jensen-Shannon divergence, and f-divergences. These would be used to evaluate, for instance, the homogeneity of a set of samples being used as metrics. We will also discuss the potential applications of the information bottleneck method that allows us to progressively extract or merge information in a hierarchical structure.

Level
Beginner

Intended Audience
The course is targeted at computer graphics and visualization researchers and practitioners. In addition, information theory practitioners will learn about the presented applications. We will stress the common aspects of the applications, to observe the kind of problems information theory tools can help solve.

Prerequisites
A basic knowledge of computer graphics is required and basic concepts in information theory are presented.

Course Schedule
Session 1: 14:15-16:00

14:15-14:20 Mateu Sbert: Welcome
14:20-15:15 Miquel Feixas: Introduction to Information Theory
15:15-15:45 Mateu Sbert: Unified Viewpoint Framework for Polygonal Models 15:45-16:00 Mateu Sbert: Applications to Global Illumination, Shape Recognition and Image Processing

Break: 16:00-16:15

Session 2: 16:15-18:00

16:15-16:45 Mateu Sbert: Applications to Global Illumination, Shape Recognition and Image Processing (continued)
16:45-17:05 Ivan Viola: Visualization and Information Theory
17:05-18:00 Ivan Viola: Information Theory in Scientific Visualization

Presenter(s)
Mateu Sbert is a Professor in Computer Science at the University of Girona. He received a MSc in Theoretical Physics (1977) at the University of Valencia, a MSc in Mathematics (1983) at the National University of Distance Education, Madrid and a PhD in Computer Science at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. His research interests include the application of Monte Carlo, Integral Geometry and Information Theory techniques to Computer Graphics and Visualization. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 papers, participated in four Eurographics tutorials, and served as a member of program committees in international conferences.

Miquel Feixas is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Girona. He received a MSc in Theoretical Physics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1979) and a PhD in Computer Science at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (2002). His research is focused on the application of Information Theory techniques to Computer Graphics and Visualization. He has co-authored more than 50 papers, served as a member of program committee in Spanish and international conferences, and participated in a Eurographics tutorial on Applications of Information Theory to Computer Graphics.

Ivan Viola is Associate Professor at University of Bergen, and scientific adviser at the Christian Michelsen Research. He received his MSc (2002) and PhD (2005) from Vienna University of Technology, Austria. His research is focused on illustrative visualization for communication of complex scientific data. Viola co-authored several scientific works published in international journals and conferences such as IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), IEEE Visualization, and EuroVis. He also acted as a reviewer and IPC member for conferences in the field of computer graphics and visualization. He is a member of Eurographics, Norsigd, IEEE Computer Society, Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC), and ACM SIGGRAPH.