A hardware acceleration method for volumetric ray tracing

We present an acceleration method for volumetric ray tracing which utilizes standard graphics hardware without compromising image accuracy. The graphics hardware is employed to identify those segments of each ray that could possibly contribute to the final image. A volumetric ray tracing algorithm is then used to compute the final image, traversing only the identified segments of the rays. This technique can be used to render volumetric isosurfaces as well as translucent volumes. In addition, this method can accelerate the traversal of shadow rays when performing recursive ray tracing.