Topology-based flow visualization, the state of the art

Flow visualization research has made rapid advances in recent years, especially in the area of topology-based flow visualization. The ever increasing size of scientific data sets favors algorithms that are capable of extracting important subsets of the data, leaving the scientist with a more manageable representation that may be visualized interactively. Extracting the topology of a flow achieves the goal of obtaining a compact representation of a vector or tensor field while simultaneously retaining its most important features. We present the state of the art in topology-based flow visualization techniques. We outline numerous topology-based algorithms categorized according to the type and dimensionality of data on which they operate and accord
ing to the goal-oriented nature of each method. Topology tracking algorithms are also discussed. The result serves as a useful introduction and overview to research literature concerned with the study of topology-based flow visualization.