Temporal Search and Replace: An Interactive Tool for the Analysis of Temporal Event Sequences

Visualization of temporal event data is increasingly important for the analysis of a broad range of data including electronic health records, web logs, and financial data. In many analytic tasks, users need the capability to manipulate the data to reveal patterns and make insights. To support this analytic need, we introduce a novel temporal search and replace tool (TSR) implemented in our existing EventFlow visual analytic system to facilitate visual-language-based search and replacement of temporal event sequences. We also introduce two types of search constraints: repetition and permutation that integrate regular expression concepts into temporal event sequence searching. We present the replacement strategy for event sequences under these constraints. Example use cases are discussed where TSR solves problems both on temporal event data analysis and simplification. Finally we report on a usability study with 10 participants.