New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scientific visualization

Scientific and Information visualization are branches of computer graphics and user interface design that are concerned with presenting data to users, by means of images. The goal of this area is usually to improve understanding of the data being presented. For example, scientists interpret potentially huge quantities of laboratory or simulation data or the results from sensors out in the field to aid reasoning, hypothesis building and cognition. The field of data mining offers many abstract visualizations related to these visualization types. They are active research areas, drawing on theory in information graphics, computer graphics, human-computer interaction and cognitive science. Desktop programs capable of presenting interactive models of molecules and microbiological entities are becoming relatively common (Molecular graphics). The field of Bioinformatics and the field of Cheminformatics make a heavy use of these visualization engines for interpreting lab data and for training purposes.

Medical imaging is a huge application domain for scientific visualization with an emphasis on enhancing imaging results graphically, e.g. using pseudo-coloring or overlaying of plots. Real-time visualization can serve to simultaneously image analysis results within or beside an analyzed (e.g. segmented) scan.

Related Stories
 


Computers & Math News

April 8, 2026

Quantum computers struggle with a major flaw: their information vanishes unpredictably. Scientists have now created a new method that can measure this loss over 100 times faster than before. By tracking changes in near real time, researchers can ...
A team of engineers has created a breakthrough memory device that keeps working at temperatures hotter than molten lava, shattering one of electronics’ biggest limits. Built from an unusual stack of ultra-durable materials, the tiny component can ...
Quantum circuits are supposed to gain power as they grow longer, but noise changes the picture. A new study finds that earlier steps in these circuits gradually lose their impact, with only the final layers really mattering. As a result, deep ...
AI is consuming staggering amounts of energy—already over 10% of U.S. electricity—and the demand is only accelerating. Now, researchers have unveiled a radically more efficient approach that could slash AI energy use by up to 100× while ...
Researchers have created a nanoscale structure that traps infrared light in a layer just 40 nanometers thick—over 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. By using a unique material with exceptional light-bending properties, they can confine and ...
Modern food systems may look stable on the surface, but they are increasingly dependent on digital systems that can quietly become a major point of failure. Today, food must be “recognized” by databases and automated platforms to be transported, ...
A new breakthrough in wireless technology could dramatically boost internet speeds while cutting energy use—by switching from radio waves to light. Researchers have developed a tiny chip packed with dozens of miniature lasers that can transmit ...
Scientists have unveiled a new approach to ultra-secure communication that could make quantum encryption simpler and more efficient than ever before. By harnessing a 19th-century optics phenomenon called the Talbot effect, researchers developed a ...
DNA robots are emerging as tiny programmable machines that could one day deliver drugs, hunt viruses, and build molecular-scale devices. By borrowing ideas from traditional robotics and combining them with DNA folding techniques, scientists are ...
Perovskite crystals can dramatically and reversibly change shape when hit with light, a behavior not seen in conventional semiconductors. This effect, called photostriction, can be finely tuned depending on the light’s intensity and color. ...
Scientists have created a microscopic QR code so tiny it can only be seen with an electron microscope—smaller than most bacteria and now officially a world record. But this isn’t just about size; ...
A new holographic storage technique uses light in three dimensions to dramatically increase how much data can be stored. It encodes information throughout a material using amplitude, phase, and ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:56 pm ET