Real-time Volume Rendering and Tractography Visualization on the Web

In the field of computer graphics, Volume Rendering techniques allow the visualization of 3D datasets, and specifically, Volume Ray-Casting renders images from volumetric datasets, typically used in some scientific areas, such as medical imaging -- This article aims to describe the development of a combined visualization of tractography and volume rendering of brain T1 MRI images in an integrated way -- An innovative web viewer for interactive visualization of neuro-imaging data has been developed based on WebGL -- This recently developed standard enables the clients to use the web viewer on a wide range of devices, with the only requirement of a compliant web-browser -- As the majority of the rendering tasks take place in the client machine, the effect of bottlenecks and server overloading are minimized -- The web application presented is able to compete with desktop tools, even supporting high graphical demands and facing challenges regarding performance and scalability -- The developed software modules are available as open source code and include MRI volume data and tractography generated by the Diffusion Toolkit, and connectivity data from the Connectome Mapping Toolkit -- Our contribution for the Volume Web Viewer implements early ray termination step according to the tractography depthmap, combining volume images and estimated white matter fibers -- Furthermore, the depthmap system extension can be used for visualization of other types of data, where geometric and volume elements are displayed simultaneously

[1]  Nigel W. John,et al.  The impact of Web3D technologies on medical education and training , 2007, Comput. Educ..

[2]  O. Abe,et al.  MR diffusion tensor imaging: recent advance and new techniques for diffusion tensor visualization. , 2003, European journal of radiology.

[3]  Pat Hanrahan,et al.  Volume Rendering , 2020, Definitions.

[4]  James T. Kajiya,et al.  Ray tracing volume densities , 1984, SIGGRAPH.

[5]  Carla Maria Dal Sasso Freitas,et al.  Optimizing Combined Volume and Surface Data Ray Casting , 2000, WSCG.

[6]  Pradeep Dubey,et al.  Mapping High-Fidelity Volume Rendering for Medical Imaging to CPU, GPU and Many-Core Architectures , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[7]  Pienaar Rudolph,et al.  Realtime Visualization of the Connectome in the Browser using WebGL , 2011 .

[8]  Marc Alexa,et al.  Volume visualization in VRML , 2001, Web3D '01.

[9]  Nicholas F. Polys,et al.  Cross-Platform Presentation of Interactive Volumetric Imagery , 2012 .

[10]  Ulrich Bockholt,et al.  Using X3D for medical training simulations , 2008, Web3D '08.

[11]  Sittapong Settapat,et al.  Web-based 3D visualization and interaction of medical data using Web3D , 2010, Proceedings of SICE Annual Conference 2010.

[12]  Oleg Davydov,et al.  A Novel White Matter Fibre Tracking Algorithm Using Probabilistic Tractography and Average Curves , 2010, MICCAI.

[13]  Wolfgang Grodd,et al.  Visualizing MR diffusion tensor fields by dynamic fiber tracking and uncertainty mapping , 2006, Comput. Graph..

[14]  C. Rezk-Salama,et al.  Advanced illumination techniques for GPU volume raycasting , 2008, SIGGRAPH ASIA Courses.

[15]  Timo Ropinski,et al.  Accelerating Volume Raycasting using Occlusion Frustums , 2008, VG/PBG@SIGGRAPH.

[16]  Rüdiger Westermann,et al.  Acceleration techniques for GPU-based volume rendering , 2003, IEEE Visualization, 2003. VIS 2003..

[17]  R. Kikinis,et al.  Interactive Diffusion Tensor Tractography Visualization for Neurosurgical Planning , 2011, Neurosurgery.

[18]  Michael Zöllner,et al.  X3DOM: a DOM-based HTML5/X3D integration model , 2009, Web3D '09.

[19]  Jean-Philippe Thiran,et al.  The Connectome Viewer Toolkit: An Open Source Framework to Manage, Analyze, and Visualize Connectomes , 2011, Front. Neuroinform..

[20]  Henning Scharsach.  Advanced GPU Raycasting , 2005 .

[21]  Klaus Mueller,et al.  A practical evaluation of popular volume rendering algorithms , 2000, VVS '00.

[22]  Bernhard P. Wrobel,et al.  Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision , 2001 .

[23]  Philipp Slusallek,et al.  XML3D: interactive 3D graphics for the web , 2010, Web3D '10.

[24]  E. Melhem,et al.  Diffusion-tensor MR imaging and tractography: exploring brain microstructure and connectivity. , 2007, Radiology.

[25]  Alan D. Hudson,et al.  MedX3D: Standards Enabled Desktop Medical 3D , 2008, MMVR.

[26]  Z. Mihajlovic,et al.  Visualization Service Based on Web Services , 2007 .

[27]  Aitor Moreno,et al.  Interactive visualization of volumetric data with WebGL in real-time , 2011, Web3D '11.

[28]  Roberto Scopigno,et al.  SpiderGL: a JavaScript 3D graphics library for next-generation WWW , 2010, Web3D '10.

[29]  Stefan Bruckner,et al.  Efficient Volume Visualization of Large Medical Datasets: Concepts and Algorithms , 2008 .

[30]  Marc Levoy,et al.  Display of surfaces from volume data , 1988, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.