Background A group of UKexperts on Scientific Visualization and its associated applications gathered at The Cosener's House in Abingdon, Oxford­ shire (UK) in February 1991 to consider all aspects of scientific visualization and to produce a number of documents: ¿ a detailed summary of current knowledge, techniques and appli­ cations in the field (this book); ¿ an Introductory Guide to Visualization that could be widely dis­ tributed to the UK academic community as an encouragement to use visualization techniques and tools in their work; ¿ 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 visualiza­ 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 visualiza­ 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 sci­ 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" pro­ duced by Ken Brodlie, Lesley Ann Carpenter, Rae Earnshaw, Julian Gallop (with Janet Haswell), Chris Osland and Peter Quarendon.