Indexing data structures for faster volume rendering

초록

Splatting and ray casting are two of the most frequently used direct volume rendering algorithms that produce images of high quality, but are computationally expensive like many other volume rendering algorithms. This paper presents a new technique that enhances the speed of both algorithms without trading off image quality. This new method reduces rendering time by employing a simple indexing mechanism which allows to visit and splat/resample only the regions of interest. The spatial data structure, proposed in this paper, can be used efficiently for both splatting and ray casting, and is shown to be well suited to the dynamic situation in which users change viewing parameters and/or opacity transfer functions interactively. We report experimental results on several test data sets of useful size and complexity, and discuss the cost/benefit trade-off of our method. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.