Overview

Today's sophisticated computer systems make it possible for you to collect and observe information in ways that used to be impractical or impossible. Once the bastion of the High Priests of Graphic Arts, the ability to produce multidimensional color plots, acquire and manipulate images, and even make movies of your data is directly available (live!) through LabVIEW. All you need to do is configure your system appropriately and, for some features, buy some third-party LabVIEW applications that offer these advanced capabilities. This chapter tells you how.

We humans have a marvelous ability to absorb visual information, but only when it is presented in optimum form. A well-designed graph or image conveys a great deal of information and gives us unexpected insight into hidden relationships buried in our data. You have to invest some programming effort, time, money, and thought to create the right visualization instrument, but the results are both valuable and impressive.

Keep in mind the fact that imaging is just another data acquisition and analysis technique. That's a fact that is overlooked when you haven't seen it in action. Images can be born of cameras and live scenes the usual pictures or they can arise from other forms of numerical data. Images are more than pretty pictures; they can be quantitative as well, spatially and in intensity. Further, you can make those images into movies and even combine them with sound by using the new concepts embodied in multimedia. LabVIEW does all of these things with the...