Fast Graphic Processing Unit-Based High-Quality Three-Dimensional Volume Rendering

Volume rendering (VR) is powerful in visualizing meaningful information existing in medical images. However, due to its high computational complexity, it is hard for VR to achieve high-quality real-time interaction. In this paper, a GPU-based VR method is first proposed in which volume texture mapping is used. To reduce requirements of the proposed method on storage of video memory, the proposed method is further improved by using slice texture with a real-time dynamic switch mechanism. Moreover, to eliminate annular distortion, a pre-integration classification method, which is implemented on GPUs, is presented. Experimental results demonstrate that (1) frame rates of the texture mapping methods are almost the same for small-scale volume data, (2) for large-scale volume data, volume texture based method failed, but frame rate of the further improved (slice texture mapping) method is still up to 20 FPS, and (3) the pre-integration method presented in this paper can improve rendering quality effectively with FPS preserved.