Virtual Endoscopy with VolumePro Parallel Rendering

Virtual Endoscopy, a non-invasive examination of hollow tubular structures within a human body, has the potential to revolutionize the field of medical diagnostics, therapy and surgical planning. It is well know that, compared polygonal approximations to isosurfaces, Volume Rendering techniques provide more accurate images. Additionally, volume rendering provides more flexible visualization, by allowing more structure than just the single iso-value to be examined. Unfortunately, previous volume rendering techniques were either too slow, too low quality, or required too expesive of a machine to be widely utilized by medical practitioners. In this paper we describe our method to produce images with perspective divergence using the parallel projection ov the Mitsubishi/Real-Time Visualizaiton VolumePro board develed at SUNY Stony Brook.