Towards Real Time Volume Rendering

The task of real time rendering of today’s volumetric datasets is still being tackled by several research groups. A quick calculation of the amount of computation required for real-time rendering of a high resolution volume puts us in the teraflop range. Yet, the demand to support such rendering capabilities is increasing due to emerging technologies such as virtual surgery simulation and rapid prototyping. There are five main approaches to overcoming this seemingly insurmountable performance barrier: (i) data reduction by means of model extraction or data simplification, (ii) realization of special-purpose volume rendering engines, (iii) software-based algorithm optimization and acceleration, (iv) implementation on general purpose parallel architectures, and (v) use of contemporary of-the-shelf graphics hardware. In this presentation we first describe the vision of real-time high-resolution volume rendering and estimate the computing power it demands. We survey the state-of-the art in rapid volume rendering and compare the achievements and effectivity of the various approaches. We look ahead and describe the remaining challenges and some possible ways of providing the needs of this ever demanding field.

[1]  Max A. Viergever,et al.  Acceleration of ray-casting using 3-D distance transforms , 1992, Other Conferences.

[2]  Theo van Walsum,et al.  Efficient Hybrid Rendering of Volume Data and Polygons , 1992 .

[3]  Heang K. Tuy,et al.  Direct 2-D display of 3-D objects , 1984, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[4]  James T. Kajiya,et al.  Ray tracing volume densities , 1984, SIGGRAPH.

[5]  David S. Ebert,et al.  Grouping Volume Renderers for Enhanced Visualization in Computational Fluid Dynamics , 1995, IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph..

[6]  Philippe Lacroute,et al.  Real-time volume rendering on shared memory multiprocessors using the shear-warp factorization , 1995 .

[7]  Philip K. Robertson,et al.  Volume rendering on the MasPar MP-1 , 1992, VVS.

[8]  Dan Gordon,et al.  Back-to-Front Display of Voxel Based Objects , 1985, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[9]  SabellaPaolo.  A rendering algorithm for visualizing 3D scalar fields , 1988 .

[10]  Marc Levoy,et al.  Efficient ray tracing of volume data , 1990, TOGS.

[11]  Gordon Stoll,et al.  Data parallel volume rendering as line drawing , 1992, VVS.

[12]  Roger Crawfis,et al.  New techniques for the scientific visualization of three-dimensional multi-variate and vector fields , 1995 .

[13]  Roni Yagel,et al.  CellFlow: A Parallel Rendering Scheme for Distributed Memory Architectures , 1995, PDPTA.

[14]  Brian Cabral,et al.  Accelerated volume rendering and tomographic reconstruction using texture mapping hardware , 1994, VVS '94.

[15]  Lee Westover,et al.  Footprint evaluation for volume rendering , 1990, SIGGRAPH.

[16]  Roni Yagel,et al.  VoxelFlow: A Parallel Volume Rendering Method for Scientific Visualization , 1995 .

[17]  Raffaele Perego,et al.  Parallel volume visualization on a hypercube architecture , 1992, VVS.

[18]  Edward J. Farrell,et al.  Color 3-D Imaging of Normal and Pathologic Intracranial Structures , 1984, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[19]  Lih-Shyang Chen,et al.  A dynamic screen technique for shaded graphics display of slice-represented objects , 1987, Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process..

[20]  Roni Yagel,et al.  Multi-Frame Thrashless Ray Casting with Advancing Ray-Front , 1996, Graphics Interface.

[21]  Arie E. Kaufman,et al.  Discrete ray tracing , 1992, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[22]  Pat Hanrahan,et al.  Hierarchical splatting: a progressive refinement algorithm for volume rendering , 1991, SIGGRAPH.

[23]  Paolo Sabella,et al.  A rendering algorithm for visualizing 3D scalar fields , 1988, SIGGRAPH.

[24]  Wolfgang Krüger.  The application of transport theory to visualization of 3D scalar data fields , 1990, VIS '90.

[25]  Raghu Machiraju,et al.  Data-parallel, volume-rendering algorithms , 1995 .

[26]  Hanan Samet,et al.  Hierarchical data structures and algorithms for computer graphics. II. Applications , 1988, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[27]  Roni Yagel,et al.  Accelerating volume animation by space-leaping , 1993, Proceedings Visualization '93.

[28]  Donald Meagher,et al.  Geometric modeling using octree encoding , 1982, Comput. Graph. Image Process..

[29]  Henry Fuchs,et al.  Image rendering by adaptive refinement , 1986, SIGGRAPH.

[30]  Nelson L. Max,et al.  Optical Models for Direct Volume Rendering , 1995, IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph..

[31]  Marc Levoy,et al.  Display of surfaces from volume data , 1988, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[32]  Paul Mackerras,et al.  Parallel volume rendering and data coherence on the Fujitsu AP1000 , 1992 .

[33]  Minesh B. Amin,et al.  Fast volume rendering using an efficient, scalable parallel formulation of the shear-warp algorithm , 1995, PRS.

[34]  P. Hanrahan.  Three-pass affine transforms for volume rendering , 1990, VVS.

[35]  Ross T. Whitaker,et al.  Direct visualization of volume data , 1992, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[36]  B. Gudmundsson,et al.  Incremental generation of projections of CT-volumes , 1990, [1990] Proceedings of the First Conference on Visualization in Biomedical Computing.

[37]  Arie E. Kaufman,et al.  Template‐Based Volume Viewing , 1992, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[38]  Roni Yagel,et al.  An Optimal Ray Traversal Scheme for Visualizing Colossal Medical Volumes , 1996, VBC.

[39]  Arie E. Kaufman,et al.  Towards a comprehensive volume visualization system , 1992, Proceedings Visualization '92.

[40]  Pat Hanrahan,et al.  Fast algorithms for volume ray tracing , 1992, VVS.

[41]  M. Levoy,et al.  Fast volume rendering using a shear-warp factorization of the viewing transformation , 1994, SIGGRAPH.

[42]  Scott A. King,et al.  Multisensory platform for surgical simulation , 1996, Proceedings of the IEEE 1996 Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium.

[43]  Craig Upson,et al.  V-buffer: visible volume rendering , 1988, SIGGRAPH.