Background A group of UKexperts on Scientific Visualization and its associated applications gathered at The Cosener's House in Abingdon, OxfordΒ shire (UK) in February 1991 to consider all aspects of scientific visualization and to produce a number of documents: β’ a detailed summary of current knowledge, techniques and appliΒ cations in the field (this book); β’ an Introductory Guide to Visualization that could be widely disΒ tributed to the UK academic community as an encouragement to use visualization techniques and tools in their work; β’ a Management Report (to the UK Advisory Group On Computer Graphics - AGOCG) documenting the principal results of the workshop and making recommendations as appropriate. This book proposes a framework through which scientific visualizaΒ tion systems may be understood and their capabilities described. It then provides overviews of the techniques, data facilities and human-computer interface that are required in a scientific visualizaΒ tion system. The ways in which scientific visualization has been applied to a wide range of applications is reviewed and the available products that are scientific visualization systems or contribute to sciΒ entific visualization systems are described. The book is completed by a comprehensive bibliography of literature relevant to scientific visualization and a glossary of terms. VI Scientific Visualization Acknowledgements This book was predominantly written during the workshop in Abingdon. The participants started from an "input document" proΒ duced by Ken Brodlie, Lesley Ann Carpenter, Rae Earnshaw, Julian Gallop (with Janet Haswell), Chris Osland and Peter Quarendon.