  The current generation of radio and millimeter telescopes, particularly the
Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), offers enormous advances in observing
capabilities. While these advances represent an unprecedented opportunity to
facilitate scientific understanding, the increased complexity in the spatial
and spectral structure of these ALMA data cubes lead to challenges in their
interpretation. In this paper, we perform a feasibility study for applying
topological data analysis and visualization techniques never before tested by
the ALMA community. Through techniques based on contour trees, we seek to
improve upon existing analysis and visualization workflows of ALMA data cubes,
in terms of accuracy and speed in feature extraction. We review our application
development process in building effective analysis and visualization
capabilities for the astrophysicists. We also summarize effective design
practices by identifying domain-specific needs of simplicity, integrability,
and reproducibility, in order to best target and service the large astrophysics
community.
