SightBi: Exploring Cross-View Data Relationships with Biclusters

Overview

SightBi is a visual analytics tool designed to explore cross-view data relationships in multiple-view (MV) visualization environments. It enables users to uncover hidden data connections across different views using biclusters, offering an intuitive and efficient alternative to traditional view-coordination techniques like brushing and linking.

By introducing relationship-views, SightBi enhances sensemaking across domains such as bioinformatics, cybersecurity, and text analytics, allowing users to visually navigate complex datasets with minimal trial-and-error.

📸 App Screenshot

Features

• Bicluster-Based Relationship Discovery: Automatically computes cross-view relationships using biclustering techniques.
• Interactive Visualization: Supports flexible layout organization with dynamic view adjustments.
• Relationship-Views: Introduces standalone relationship-views to help preserve the integrity of existing visualizations.
• Multi-Level Exploration: Enables users to filter, refocus, and connect data across different views.
• Customizable Interactions: Supports dragging, linking, pinning, and marking relationships for efficient exploration.

Installation

Prerequisites

Ensure you have the following dependencies installed:

• Node.js (>= 14.x)
• Required Node.js packages:

  npm install express ejs body-parser fs path html-to-image jsdom xml-reader xml-query read-xml node-geocoder objects-to-csv

• D3.js and related visualization libraries

Cloning the Repository

Clone the SightBi repository from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/sabdulrahman/SightBi.git
cd SightBi

Running SightBi

To launch SightBi, run:

node index.js

Then, open your browser and navigate to:

http://localhost:3000

Usage

1. Load Your Dataset: Import data containing multiple views (e.g., networks, spatial data, text, etc.).
2. Compute Cross-View Relationships: Use SightBi’s biclustering algorithms to automatically identify related subsets.
3. Explore Relationship-Views: Interactively navigate detected relationships between views.
4. Adjust Layouts: Drag and reposition views for better analysis.
5. Save & Export Findings: Export visualizations for reports and presentations.

Example Use Case

A security analyst using SightBi can:

• Load intelligence reports and visualize networks of entities (e.g., people, locations, organizations).
• Automatically detect collusions among suspicious individuals.
• Visually track connections between suspects and locations without manually inspecting individual records.
• Generate interactive reports with the findings.

Citation

For more details, refer to the paper: SightBi: Exploring Cross-View Data Relationships with Biclusters

If you use SightBi in your research, please cite:

@article{sun2021sightbi,
  author    = {Maoyuan Sun and Abdul Rahman Shaikh and Hamed Alhoori and Jian Zhao},
  title     = {SightBi: Exploring Cross-View Data Relationships with Biclusters},
  journal   = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
  year      = {2021}
}