Visualization deals with all aspects that are connected with the visual representation of data sets from scientific experiments, simulations, medical scanners, and the like in order to achieve a deeper understanding or a simpler representation of complex phenomena. To achieve this goal, both well-known techniques from the field of interactive computer graphics and completely new methods are applied. This course covers basic knowledge and practical applications of visualization by discussing the following topics:

• Introduction, historical remarks, visualization pipeline
• Data acquisition and representation (sampling and reconstruction; grids and data structures)
• Basic mapping concepts
• Visualization of scalar fields (isosurface extraction, volume rendering)
• Visualization of vector fields (particle tracing, texture-based methods, vector field topology)
• Tensor fields, multi-attribute data, multi-field visualization