Multi-Scale 3D Rendering of Big Biological Images CVLab-EPFL

We present a technique for rendering large volumetric datasets of biological images in three dimensions. Currently, the size of the datasets that are acquired by digital imaging tools exceeds the memory capacity of many graphics cards and even computers. This makes it impossible to just load such volumes in memory and display them directly. To deal with this issue, we devised a multi-resolution approach based on an Octree decomposition of the volume, associated with the preprocessing and storage of the lower resolution layers. Our method allows us to seamlessly render datasets that exceeds the computer’s RAM capacity.