A Framework for Interactive Visualization and Classification of Dynamical Processes at the Water Surface

Abstract

A framework for the visualization and classification of multi-channel spatio-temporal data from water wave imaging is presented. Our interactive visualization tool, WaveVis, allows a detailed study of the water surface shape in reference to additional data streams, like thermographic images or classification results. This facilitates an intuitive and effective inspection of huge amounts of data. WaveVis was used to select representative training examples of events for a supervised learning approach and to evaluate the results of the classification. The interactive classification and segmentation software ilastik was used to train a Random Forest classifier. The benefit of the combination of both programs is demonstrated for two applications, the estimation of the rain rate from the segmentation of impact craters, and the detection of small scale breaking waves. The classification of the impact crater of raindrops on the water surface worked very well, whereas the detection of the breaking waves was satisfactory only under certain experimental conditions. Nevertheless, the combination of WaveVis and ilastik proved to be valuable in both cases.