Analysis of feature extraction criteria for vector field visualization

This paper addresses the problem of the visualization of vector-valued images. It is attempted to synthesize a display matched to the capabilities of a human observer. The problem is reduced to the extraction of the best linear feature of the vector field. Several new nonparametric feature extraction criteria (projection indices) that make use of both the spatial and multivariate structures of the data have been recently proposed and demonstrated. A theoretical analysis of these projection indices and a Monte-Carlo study of their effectiveness is presented here. The study uses performance measures derived from a decision-theoretic model of the human observer.