Interactive voxel-based graphics for 3D reconstruction of biological structures

Abstract To aid the visualization and manipulation of complex biological structures, a reconstruction system is developed that is based on a volume representation of objects. This approach has several advantages for numerical quantification of parameters as well as interactive manipulation of the objects. In addition to developing the software, we decided to try and exploit readily available image processing hardware to support the display and manipulation of voxel models. At display time, encoded normal vectors on the visible surface are stored in the framebuffer. Changing the light direction then merely involves recalculating the output lookup table. The removal and addition of voxels require only local modifications to the displayed image, allowing interactive editing of the model. The ability of the hardware to calculate bitwise logical functions on two frames is used for the modelling of objects through union, intersection and difference of two volume-element sets that are stored in the framebuffers.

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