PARAVOL: Parallel Volume Rendering for Virtual Medicine

PARAVOL is a system under construction that combines software and hardware renderers. The system consists of the Fuzzy-Set Renderer (FSR), which runs on a Silicon Graphics Reality Engine, and the Active Ray-Tracer (ART), which runs on the Cray T3D. FSR utilizes hardware-based texture mapping to deliver real-time, medium quality, volume rendered images. It is geared mainly to provide a navigation aid and a tool for preliminary data explora- tion. Interaction is multisensory, combining various input devices and future haptic feedback. Rendering parameters are passed from the FSR front end to the ART renderer. It is based on a ray-stacking mechanism that supports latency hiding by postponing computation on inactive rays. It optimizes memory usage and utilizes a cache-only-memory organization to achieve high quality rendering while demonstrating linear speedup.

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