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The Carle Illinois College of Medicine is a new professional school with an engineering-focused approach to the medical education of Physician Innovators. Over 200 faculty representing diverse disciplines from across the Illinois campus were identified to provide instruction, curricular support, and mentorship for student-driven research. Representing academic departments in STEM, medicine, health and life sciences, this trans-disciplinary approach to medical education creates unique opportunities for innovation. While processes to review the academic performance of students are continually being iterated upon, another aspect of assessing the research efficacy of a college is to track the scholarly impact of affiliated faculty. Librarian information professionals embedded in academic libraries have developed expertise in the understanding, use and application of research metrics. This information has typically been provided in narrative form, non-interactive graphs, or has required a significant understanding of specialized visualization tools (such as Tableau), which may also incur licensing fees. The Grainger Engineering Library Information Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has developed a new visualization web tool to display and disseminate data on scholarly impact of faculty in the new medical school. This tool requires no additional software for use or access, displays information in interactive form, and provides meaningful connections between data points. By harvesting bibliographic metadata through the Scopus API, the NIH and NSF websites, and the USPTO office, college administrators are able to visualize the publications, collaborations, citation metrics, and funded projects of their faculty. Harvested metadata is stored in a Microsoft Access relational database in separate tables. Bibliographic data and metrics including author name, list of publications within a specific date range, hindex, cited by count, number of co-authors and list of funded grants, and patents is then transcribed into a combined table. Utilizing HTML5 and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a web-based program displays each data element of the combined table with a clickable link to expanded results for each author. With a focus on engineering, technology, and innovation in the new medical school, granted patents of affiliated faculty and students are tracked to assess the entrepreneurial impact of the curricula. By tracking scholarly impact, universities are provided with metrics to help set the direction of curricular development, recruit high performing faculty and students, and make strategic budgeting decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-engaged scholars, practitioners, and community partners often find the language of community engagement challenging. Words like participate, collaborate, partner, or engage fail to convey who in a community-university partnership has voice and authority in decisionmaking and responsibility for actions. The Degree of Collaboration Abacus Tool was developed as a visual to address this challenge. The authors provide two case studies to demonstrate how this tool can be used to name steps in community-engaged projects, clarify voice and decision-making authority, and represent collaboration responsibilities at multiple project stages. The Matter of Origins evaluation example illustrates how the tool can be used in a community-engaged research setting. The GRAND Learning Network example demonstrates how the tool can be used in a more complex community-engaged teaching and learning context. In the conclusion, the authors acknowledge the tool's potential limitations and imagine possible adaptations of the tool for other community-university partnership contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: One of the main challenges when analyzing complex metagenomics data is the fact that large amounts of information need to be presented in a comprehensive and easy-to-navigate way. In the process of analyzing FASTQ sequencing data, visualizing which organisms are present in the data can be useful, especially with metagenomics data or data suspected to be contaminated. Here, we describe the development and application of a command-line tool, Keanu, for visualizing and exploring sample content in metagenomics data. We developed Keanu as an interactive tool to make viewing complex data easier. Results: Keanu, a tool for exploring sequence content, helps a user to understand the presence and abundance of organisms in a sample by analyzing alignments against a database that contains taxonomy data and displaying them in an interactive web page. The content of a sample can be presented either as a collapsible tree, with node size indicating abundance, or as a bilevel partition graph, with arc size indicating abundance. Here, we illustrate how Keanu works by exploring shotgun metagenomics data from a sample collected from a bluff that contained paleosols and a krotovina in an alpine site in Ft. Greely, Alaska. Conclusions: Keanu provides a simple means by which researchers can explore and visualize species present in sequence data generated from complex communities and environments. Keanu is written in Python and is freely available at https://github.com/IGBB/keanu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goal: This paper describes a method to enhance, visualize, and reveal subtle motion that can be present in medical images. As proposed in vision applications, the principle is to magnify displacement applied, in this case, to cardiovascular tissues (carotid). Methods: In the example presented, ultrasound data were acquired at a high frame rate and two-dimensional motion was estimated, amplified, and reapplied in ultrasound carotid sequences. Results: Video magnification makes fast and complex phenomena of human tissue visible. In fact, not only pulse and reflected wave, but also global radial and longitudinal motion in the example presented are visible with video magnification. Conclusion: Video magnification can be used in medical imaging for subtle motion visualization. One of the many possible applications is direct visualization of a local modification in terms of stiffness of a tissue (due to local necrosis, for instance) from acquisition. Moreover, video magnification can be executed with any type of imaging modality. Significance: Video magnification could be a new tool for physicians to highlight new pathology indicators or for long-term disease monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: As a variety of visualization tools become available to librarians and researchers, it can be challenging to select a tool that is robust and flexible enough to provide the desired visualization outcomes for work or personal use. In this article, the authors provide guidance on several freely available tools, and offer a rubric for use in evaluating visualization tools. Methods: A rubric was generated to assist the authors in assessing the selected six freely available visualization tools. Each author analyzed three tools, and discussed the differences, similarities, challenges, and successes of each. Results: Of the six visualization tools, two tools emerged with high marks. The authors found that the rubric was a successful evaluation tool, and facilitated discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the six selected visualization pieces of software. Conclusions: Of the six different visualization tools analyzed, all had different functions and features available to best meet the needs of users. In a situation where there are many options available, and it is difficult at first glance to determine a clear winner, a rubric can be useful in providing a method to quickly assess and communicate the effectiveness of a tool.

Ground-penetrating 2D radar scans are captured in road environments for examination of pavement condition and below-ground variations such as lowerings and developing pot-holes. 3D point clouds captured above ground provide a precise digital representation of the road's surface and the surrounding environment. If both data sources are captured for the same area, a combined visualization is a valuable tool for infrastructure maintenance tasks. This paper presents visualization techniques developed for the combined visual exploration of the data captured in road environments. Main challenges are the positioning of the ground radar data within the 3D environment and the reduction of occlusion for individual data sets. By projecting the measured ground radar data onto the precise trajectory of the scan, it can be displayed within the context of the 3D point cloud representation of the road environment. We show that customizable overlay, filtering, and cropping techniques enable insightful data exploration. A 3D renderer combines both data sources. To enable an inspection of areas of interest, ground radar data can be elevated above ground level for better visibility. An interactive lens approach enables to visualize data sources that are currently occluded by others. The visualization techniques prove to be a valuable tool for ground layer anomaly inspection and were evaluated in a real-world data set. The combination of 2D ground radar scans with 3D point cloud data improves data interpretation by giving context information (e. g., about manholes in the street) that can be directly accessed during evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To describe a Bayesian network (BN) and complementary visualization tool that aim to support decision‐making during online cone‐beam computed tomography (CBCT)‐based image‐guided radiotherapy (IGRT) for prostate cancer patients. Methods: The BN was created to represent relationships between observed prostate, proximal seminal vesicle (PSV), bladder and rectum volume variations, an image feature alignment score (FASTV_OAR), delivered dose, and treatment plan compliance (TPC). Variables influencing tumor volume (TV) targeting accuracy such as intrafraction motion, and contouring and couch shift errors were also represented. A score of overall TPC (FASglobal) and factors such as image quality were used to inform the BN output node providing advice about proceeding with treatment. The BN was quantified using conditional probabilities generated from published studies, FASTV_OAR/global modeling, and a survey of IGRT decision‐making practices. A new IGRT visualization tool (IGRTREV), in the form of Mollweide projection plots, was developed to provide a global summary of residual errors after online CBCT‐planning CT registration. Sensitivity and scenario analyses were undertaken to evaluate the performance of the BN and the relative influence of the network variables on TPC and the decision to proceed with treatment. The IGRTREV plots were evaluated in conjunction with the BN scenario testing, using additional test data generated from retrospective CBCT‐planning CT soft‐tissue registrations for 13/36 patients whose data were used in the FASTV_OAR/global modeling. Results: Modeling of the TV targeting errors resulted in a very low probability of corrected distances between the CBCT and planning CT prostate or PSV volumes being within their thresholds. Strength of influence evaluation with and without the BN TV targeting error nodes indicated that rectum‐ and bladder‐related network variables had the highest relative importance. When the TV targeting error nodes were excluded from the BN, TPC was sensitive to observed PSV and rectum variations while the decision to treat was sensitive to observed prostate and PSV variations. When root nodes were set so the PSV and rectum variations exceeded thresholds, the probability of low TPC increased to 40%. Prostate and PSV variations exceeding thresholds increased the likelihood of repositioning or repeating patient preparation to 43%. Scenario testing using the test data from 13 patients, demonstrated two cases where the BN provided increased high TPC probabilities, despite some of the prostate and PSV volume variation metrics not being within tolerance. The IGRTREV tool was effective in highlighting and quantifying where TV and OAR variations occurred, supporting the BN recommendation to reposition the patient or repeat their bladder and bowel preparation. In another case, the IGRTREV tool was also effective in highlighting where PSV volume variation significantly exceeded tolerance when the BN had indicated to proceed with treatment. Conclusions: This study has demonstrated that both the BN and IGRTREV plots are effective tools for inclusion in a decision support system for online CBCT‐based IGRT for prostate cancer patients. Alternate approaches to modeling TV targeting errors need to be explored as well as extension of the BN to support offline IGRT decisions related to adaptive radiotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air traffic management is organized into filters in order to prevent tactical controllers from dealing with complex conflicting situations. In this article, we describe an experiment showing that a dynamic conflict display could improve human performance on complex conflict situations. Specifically, we designed a display tool that represents the conflicting portions of aircraft trajectories and the evolution of the conflict zone when the user adds a maneuver to an aircraft. The tool allows the user to dynamically check the potential conflicting zones with the computer mouse before making a maneuver decision. We tested its utility on a population of forty students: twenty air traffic controller (ATC) students at the end of their initial training and twenty engineering students with the same background but no ATC training. They had to solve conflicts involving 2-5 aircraft with a basic display and with the dynamic visualization tool. Results show that in easy situations (2 aircraft), performance is similar with both displays. However, as the complexity of the situations grows (from 3 to 5 aircraft), the dynamic visualization tool enables users to solve the conflicts more efficiently. Using the tool leads to fewer unsolved conflicts and shorter delays. No significant differences are found between the two test groups except for delays: ATC students give maneuvers that generate less delays than engineering students. These results suggest that humans are better able to manage complex situations with the help of our conflict visualization tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Receiver functions are a versatile tool commonly used in seismic imaging. Depending on how they are processed, they can be used to image discontinuity structure within the crust or mantle or they can be inverted for seismic velocity either directly or jointly with complementary datasets. However, modern studies generally require large datasets which can be challenging to handle; therefore, FuncLab was originally written as an interactive Matlab GUI to assist in handling these large datasets. This software uses a project database to allow interactive trace editing, data visualization, H-κ stacking for crustal thickness and Vp/Vs ratio, and common conversion point stacking while minimizing computational costs. Since its initial release, significant advances have been made in the implementation of web services and changes in the underlying Matlab platform have necessitated a significant revision to the software. Here, we present revisions to the software, including new features such as data downloading via irisFetch.m, receiver function calculations via processRFmatlab, on-the-fly cross-section tools, interface picking, and more. In the descriptions of the tools, we present its application to a test dataset in Michigan, Wisconsin, and neighboring areas following the passage of USArray Transportable Array. The software is made available online at https://robporritt.wordpress.com/software and the IRIS seismic software repository, https://seiscode.iris.washington.edu/ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the lack of friendly and convenient visualization tool for parameter identification and verification of excitation system of synchronous generator, based on Matlab/GUI development platform and modeling guide for excitation system of synchronous generator, a visualization tool for parameter identification and verification of excitation system of synchronous generator was designed, the functional requirement and architecture design of the visualization tool was provided, the realization method and feature of the tool including excitation system modeling module was described, parameter identification module, parameter verification module and result output module, and accomplished the test of the tool by making use of the measured generator excitation system data. The test results indicate that the complex operating procedures and calculation processes can be packaged and simplified to the input and adjustment of key parameters through modularization and localization, which can effectively reduce the complexity of the operation. Automatic identification algorithm and regularization of the expert experience can guarantee the accuracy of automatic identification results and reduce the dependence on staff skills and experience. The visualization tool developed can reduce the amount of operation by 40%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]