Treecube+3D-ViSOM:: Combinational visualization tool for browsing 3D multimedia data

This paper proposes a new visualization tool for browsing 3D multimedia data. This is realized as a combinational visualization tool of Treecube and 3D-ViSOM which are both proposed by the same research group of the authors. Treecube is a visualization tool for hierarchical information developed as a 3D extension from a 2D visualization tool, Treemap proposed by Ben Shneiderman, et. at in 1992. Treecube is useful for browsing 3D multimedia data stored in a file system because the file system has a hierarchical structure. However, if many data exist in one directory, it is not easy for the user to find his/her required data from it. On the other hand, 3D-ViSOM is a 3D-SOM (Self Organizing Map) based visualization tool for browsing 3D multimedia data. Using the 3D-SOM layout, similar feature data are located in the same area and it is easy for the user to find his/her required data by the browsing. Since 3D-ViSOM can solve the problem Treecube has, the authors propose a combinational visualization tool of Treecube and 3D-ViSOM in this paper.