Abstract
In this paper we introduce the Indented Pixel Tree Browser—an interactive tool for exploring, annotating, and comparing huge hierarchical structures on different levels of granularity. We exploit the indented visual metaphor to map tree structures to one-dimensional zigzag curves to primarily achieve an overview representation for the entire hierarchy. We focus on space-efficiency and simultaneous uncovering of tree-specific phenomena. Each displayed plot can be filtered for substructures that are mapped to a larger space and hence, unhide more fine-granular substructures that are hidden in the compressed overview. By representing tree structures side-by-side, the viewer can easily compare them visually and detect similar patterns and also anomalies. In our approach, we follow the information seeking mantra: overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand. More interactive features such as expanding and collapsing of nodes, applying different color codings, or distorting the tree horizontally as well as vertically support a viewer when exploring huge hierarchical data sets. The usefulness of our interactive browsing tool is demonstrated in a case study for the NCBI taxonomy that contains 324,276 species and organisms that are hierarchically organized.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Reingold, E.M., Tilford, J.S.: Tidier drawings of trees. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 7, 223–228 (1981)
Koffka, K.: Principles of Gestalt Psychology. Harcourt-Brace, New York (1935)
Kruskal, J., Landwehr, J.: Icicle plots: Better displays for hierarchical clustering. The American Statistician 37, 162–168 (1983)
Shneiderman, B.: Tree visualization with tree-maps: a 2D space-filling approach. ACM Transactions on Graphics 11, 92–99 (1992)
Burch, M., Raschke, M., Weiskopf, D.: Indented pixel tree plots. In: Proceedings of International Symposium on Visual Computing, pp. 338–349 (2010)
Sayers, E.W., Barrett, T.: Database resources of the national center for biotechnology information. Nucleic Acids Research 37, 5–15 (2009)
Bertin, J.: Semiologie graphique: Les diagrammes, Les reseaux, Les cartes (2nd edition 1973, English translation 1983). Editions Gauthier-Villars, Paris (1967)
Knuth, D.: The Art of Computer Programming. Fundamental Algorithms, vol. I. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1968)
McGuffin, M.J., Robert, J.M.: Quantifying the space-efficiency of 2D graphical representations of trees. Information Visualization 9, 115–140 (2009)
Jürgensmann, S., Schulz, H.J.: A visual survey of tree visualization. Poster Compendium of the IEEE Conference on Information Visualization (2010)
Battista, G.D., Eades, P., Tamassia, R., Tollis, I.G.: Graph Drawing: Algorithms for the visualization of graphs. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (1999)
Herman, I., Melançon, G., Marshall, M.S.: Graph visualization and navigation in information visualization: A survey. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 6, 24–43 (2000)
Eades, P.: Drawing free trees. Bulletin of the Institute for Combinatorics and its Applications 5, 10–36 (1992)
Grivet, S., Auber, D., Domenger, J.P., Melançon, G.: Bubble tree drawing algorithm. In: Wojciechowski, K., Smolka, B., Palus, H., Kozera, R.S., Skarbek, W., Noakes, L. (eds.) Computer Vision and Graphics, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 633–641. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Purchase, H.: Metrics for graph drawing aesthetics. Visual Languages and Computing 13, 501–516 (2002)
Andrews, K., Heidegger, H.: Information slices: Visualising and exploring large hierarchies using cascading, semi-circular discs. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Information Visualization Symposium, Late Breaking Hot Topics, pp. 9–12 (1998)
Stasko, J.T., Zhang, E.: Focus+context display and navigation techniques for enhancing radial, space-filling hierarchy visualizations. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, pp. 57–66 (2000)
Yang, J., Ward, M.O., Rundensteiner, E.A., Patro, A.: InterRing: a visual interface for navigating and manipulating hierarchies. Information Visualization 2, 16–30 (2003)
Bruls, M., Huizing, K., van Wijk, J.: Squarified treemaps. In: Proceedings of Joint Eurographics and IEEE TCVG Symposium on Visualization, pp. 33–42 (2000)
van Wijk, J.J., van de Wetering, H.: Cushion treemaps: Visualization of hierarchical information. In: Proceedings of Information Visualization, pp. 73–78 (1999)
Balzer, M., Deussen, O., Lewerentz, C.: Voronoi treemaps for the visualization of software metrics. In: Proceedings of Software Visualization, pp. 165–172 (2005)
Shneiderman, B.: The eyes have it: A task by data type taxonomy for information visualizations. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, pp. 336–343 (1996)
Lamping, J., Rao, R., Pirolli, P.: A focus+content technique based on hyperbolic geometry for viewing large hierarchies. In: Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 401–408 (1995)
Munzner, T., Guimbretière, F., Tasiran, S., Zhang, L., Zhou, Y.: TreeJuxtaposer: scalable tree comparison using focus+context with guaranteed visibility. ACM Transactions on Graphics 22, 453–462 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Burch, M., Schmauder, H., Weiskopf, D. (2011). Indented Pixel Tree Browser for Exploring Huge Hierarchies. In: Bebis, G., et al. Advances in Visual Computing. ISVC 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6938. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24028-7_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24028-7_28
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24027-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24028-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)