Here is a list of topics for your final project, but you can suggest one of your own (but the complexity should match that of the projects given below. URLs for some of the papers are given here, others and references you can either find on the web (use Google for example) or in the SBU electronic library (select electronic journals or electronic journal collections for ACM and IEEE articles), or the physical library. If you cannot find the papers then I can provide you with a copy. Select a topic and send me email. Many of the papers describe a larger effort, just pick a reasonable subset of the features described there. Ideally, each student would pick a different topic, but that is not a hard requirement. Use a webpage to document your progress. Let me know if you need a VisLab account, for example if you pick a project that requires special hardware. Also, if you need data to test and showcase your implementation, let me know. Most of these projects can also be extended to longer-term projects, for example MS projects.

Important: Pick a project by April 18 at the very latest and send me email which one you picked (or which new one you suggest). Final projects are fun since you picked the topic, but they require dedication to get it accomplished. We will have a small conference at the end of the semester (see online syllabus for the date) where all students will be presenting their results.

1. Volume rendering rendering on regular grids:

• GPU-Based Nonlinear Ray Tracing paper
• Real-Time Ray-Casting and Advanced Shading of Discrete Isosurfaces  URL  paper
• Spectral volume rendering using GPU-based raycasting paper
• Hue-Preserving Color Blending paper
• Explorable Images for Visualizing Volume Data paper
• Instant Volume Visualization using Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation  paper
  

2. Transfer function design:

• High-Level User Interfaces for Transfer Function Design with Semantics URL paper
• Lighting Transfer Functions Using Gradient Aligned Sampling paper
• Information-based transfer functions for multi-modal visualization  URL  paper
  
• Design of Multi-dimensional Transfer Functions Using Dimensional Reduction paper
• Curvature-Based Transfer Functions for Direct Volume Rendering: Methods and Applications URL paper
• Interactive Transfer Function Design Based on Editing Direct Volume Rendered Images paper
• Visibility Histograms and Visibility-Driven Transfer Functions  paper
• Structuring Feature Space: A Non-Parametric Method for Volumetric Transfer Function Generation paper

3. Illustrative Techniques:

• Light Collages  URL paper
• Exaggerated Shading for Depicting Shape and Detail URL paper
• Importance-Driven Volume Rendering   URL paper
• Illustrative Context-Preserving Volume Rendering   URL paper
• Stylized Augmented Reality for Improved Immersion   URL  paper
• Structure-preserving manipulation of photographs URL  paper
• Illustration-inspired techniques for visualizing time-varying data  paper
  
• Stylization and abstraction of photographs paper
• Illustrative Display of Hidden Iso-Surface Structures  URL paper
• ClearView: An Interactive Context Preserving Hotspot Visualization Technique URL  paper
• Caricaturistic Visualization URL  paper
• Semantic Layers for Illustrative Volume Rendering  URL  paper

4. Perception-aware rendering:

• Perception-Based Transparency Optimization for Direct Volume Rendering paper
• Discovering High-level Parameters for Visualization Design  paper

5. Comparitive visualization and view selection:

• Importance-Driven Focus of Attention URL  paper
• View Selection for Volume Rendering  paper  or the spatial portion in the newer paper Dynamic View Selection for Time-Varying Volumes paper

6. Irregular and scattered datasets::

• Volume MLS Raycasting  ULR  paper
  
• Enhancing the Interactive Visualization of Procedurally Encoded Multifield Data with Ellipsoidal Basis Functions  paper   
  
• A Two-Step Approach for Interactive Pre-Integrated Volume Rendering of Unstructured Grids  URL paper  (or any of the many papers this author has written on this subject)

7.  Deformations:

• Deformable Bodies  URL  (pick any paper you like, or a combination)
• Fast Volumetric Deformation On General Purpose Hardware  paper
  

8. Information visualization and visual analytics:

• High Performance Multivariate Visual Data Exploration for Extremely Large Data  paper
  
• Rolling the Dice: Multidimensional Visual Exploration using Scatterplot Matrix Navigation   URL  paper
  
• Video Visualization URL  paper
• NodeTrix: A Hybrid Visualization of Social Networks paper
• Smooth and Efficient Zooming and Panning  paper
• Interactive Hierarchical Dimension Ordering, Spacing, and Filtering for Exploration of High Dimensional Datasets  paper
• Space-scale diagrams: understanding multiscale interfaces  paper
• Selecting Good Views of High-Dimensional Data Using Class Consistency  paper
  
• Generating Color Palettes using Intuitive Parameters  paper
• From Web Data to Visualization via Ontology Mapping  paper
• Interactive Dimensionality Reduction Through User-defined Combinations of Quality Metrics  paper