Localizing Vector Field Topology

The topology of vector fields offers a well known way to show a “condensed” view of the stream line behavior of a vector field. The global structure of a field can be shown without time-consuming user interaction. With regard to large data visualization, one encounters a major drawback: the necessity to analyze a whole data set, even when interested in only a small region. We show that one can localize the topology concept by including the boundary in the topology analysis. The idea is demonstrated for a turbulent swirling jet simulation example. Our concept works for all planar, piecewise analytic vector fields on bounded domains.