On Trajectory Representation for Scientific Features

In this article, we present trajectory representation algorithms for tangible features found in temporally varying scientific datasets. Rather than modeling the features as points, we take attributes like shape and extent of the feature into account. Our contention is that these attributes play an important role in understanding the temporal evolution and interactions among features. The proposed representation scheme is based on motion and shape parameters including linear velocity, angular velocity, etc. We use these parameters to segment the trajectory instead of relying on the geometry of the trajectory. We evaluate our algorithms on real datasets originating from different domains. We show the accuracy of the motion and shape parameter estimation by reconstructing the trajectories with high accuracy. Finally, we present performance and scalability results.