Interactive Exploration of Large Event Datasets in High Energy Physics

In high energy physics the structure of matter is investigated through particle accelerator experiments where particle collisions (events) occur at such high energies that new particles are produced. Providing tools for interactive visual inspection of billions of such events occurring in an experiment in an intuitive way is a challenging task. In order to solve this problem we built on previous approaches for visual browsing through image databases and extend them in several ways in order to allow efficient navigation through the collision event datasets. The key features of our novel browsing technique are its applicability to the very large event datasets, a more intuitive selection method for specifying a region of interest, and finally a clustering-based technique that further simplifies and improves the navigation process. We demonstrate the potential of our novel visual inspection system by integrating it into an event display application for the COMPASS experiment at CERN.