Iso-surface volume rendering

Medical application of volume-rendering techniques requires algorithms with a very high spatial accuracy. In this paper, a new volume-rendering method called 'Iso-Surface Volume Rendering' will be introduced. This method is able to visualize an iso-surface in a volumetric dataset with the highest possible accuracy. Furthermore, this new method is very fast, allowing interactive visualization on low-cost workstations without compromising quality. Given the point- spread function and the sample distance (voxel distance) of the acquisition device it is possible to calculate the spatial error that is made when the surface of an object is estimated by an iso-surface. It will be shown that this error depends on the sample distance, the sample location, and the interpolation function used. When the sample distance is very small, the error approaches zero.