Poster: Volume Cracker: A bimanual 3D interaction technique for analysis of raw volumetric data

Volume data analysis often involves finding structures inside the volume. Segmentation is the standard method, but it is quite time-consuming. Alternate approaches remove context, assume prior definition of ROI or segments, or distort part of the volume. We propose a new bimanual 3D interaction technique, called Volume Cracker (VC), which allows the user to crack open a volume like a book to analyze the internal structures. VC preserves context by always displaying all the voxels, and by connecting the sub-volumes with curves joining the cracked faces. We discuss the various design choices that we made, based on observations from our prior user studies with volume datasets, inputs from domain scientists, and numerous design studios and brainstorming sessions. We also report the results of a user study comparing VC with a standard desktop interaction technique and a standard 3D bimanual interaction technique. The study used tasks from two categories of a volume analysis task taxonomy that we are designing in consultation with domain scientists. We found VC had significant advantages over the other two techniques for search and pattern recognition tasks.