Visibility-Driven Depth Determination of Surface Patches in Direct Volume Rendering

This paper presents an algorithm called surfseek for selecting surfaces on the most visible features in direct volume rendering (DVR). The algorithm is based on a previously published technique (WYSIWYP) for picking 3D locations in DVR. The new algorithm projects a surface patch on the DVR image, consisting of multiple rays. For each ray the algorithm uses WYSIWYP or a variant of it to find the candidates for the most visible locations along the ray. Using these candidates the algorithm constructs a graph and computes a minimum cut on this graph. The minimum cut represents a very visible but relatively smooth surface. In the last step the selected surface is displayed. We provide examples for the results in real-world dataset as well as in artificially generated datasets.

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