Improved characterization of Lagrangian coherent structures through time-scale analysis

Abstract: The computation of Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) has established itself as a prominent means to reveal significant geometric structures in time-dependent vector fields. Their characterization, however, requires the selection of a suitable time parameter for the construction of the flow map that may not be known in advance. We present in this paper a continuous time-scale framework for LCS extraction and visualization. Specifically, we treat the time axis as a continuum from which a best temporal scale is automatically determined at each spatial location for the extraction of LCS. Beyond its effectiveness with vector fields we show that this method can be successfully applied to improve the characterization of salient structures in tensor fields and discrete maps. We present applications of our method to problems spanning fluid dynamics, medical imaging, and orbital mechanics. The results show that our approach can reveal important structural features that are missed by existing LCS extraction methods.