Interactive Exploration of Spatially Distributed Near Infrared Reflectance Data

Hayden Munro ^1,2 , George Benwell ¹, Kevin Novins ², Alistair Mowat ³

¹Department of Information Science,
University of Otago, P.O.Box 56,
Dunedin, NZ.
²Department of Computer Science,
University of Otago, P.O.Box 56,
Dunedin, NZ.
³HortResearch,
Ruakura Research Centre,
Private Bag 3123, Hamilton, NZ.

Presented at the second annual conference of GeoComputation ‘97 & SIRC ‘97, University of Otago, New Zealand, 26-29 August 1997

Abstract

The display of a vector of data values at a set of spatially-distributed 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 non-destructive 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.