Beyond Imaging - Interactive Tabletop System for Tomographic Data Visualization and Analysis

This paper presents an innovative endeavour towards more efficient and convenient analysis of large, complicated numerical datasets, such as the results gathered through electric capacitance process tomography. The proposed solution employs the approach of utilising interactive tangible displays for more efficient and appealing data visualisation. The ultimate goal was to deliver a tool which could not only enhance the analyst’s performance, but also enable deriving supplementary observations and conclusions. The objective was obtained through implementing the system onto the tabletop display, which may be operated as an interactive table or a desktop touchscreen. The solution was tested in action through the series of industrial task experiments, to be completed using various setups of the system. The results of the post-exercise surveys show that the best performance is obtained using the inclined tabletop display. The classic table approach was rated as relatively inconvenient, while providing fair effectiveness. The seated-user desktop display was rated to be neither comfortable nor satisfactorily functional.