Interactive Exploration of Spatially Distributed Near Infrared Reflectance Data

The display of a vector of data values at a set of spatiallydistributed sample points presents some interesting visualisation problems. Typical display devices provide only two spatial di mensions plus colour, making it necessary to design new methods for representing the data. This paper describes a tool under development that allows users to visualise the spatial ripening characteristics of fruit. Sugar, acid and moisture content can be measured using nondestructive Near Infrared Reflectance (NIR) analysis techniques. We introduce the notion of spectrum and spatial tools and show how they may be combined to form a flexible visualisation environment for exploring NIR data. These notions may be generalised to areas such as LANDSAT imagery. We expect that high performance computing systems will enable us to extend our tools so that they can operate at a wide range of spatial scales.