Feature Tracking Using Reeb Graphs

Abstract

Tracking features and exploring their temporal dynamics can aid scientists in identifying interesting time intervals in a simulation and serve as basis for performing quantitative analyses of temporal phenomena. In this paper, we develop a novel approach for tracking subsets of isosurfaces, such as burning regions in simulated flames, which are defined as areas of high fuel consumption on a temperature isosurface. Tracking such regions as they merge and split over time can provide important insights into the impact of turbulence on the combustion process. However, the convoluted nature of the temperature isosurface and its rapid movement make this analysis particularly challenging. Our approach tracks burning regions by extracting a temperature isovolume from the four-dimensional space-time temperature field. It then obtains isosurfaces for the original simulation time steps and labels individual connected 'burning' regions based on the local fuel consumption value. Based on this information, a boundary surface between burning and non-burning regions is constructed. The Reeb graph of this boundary surface is the tracking graph for burning regions.