Authors:
Francisco Velasco
;
Juan Carlos Torres
;
Alejandro León
and
Francisco Soler
Affiliation:
ETSIIT, University of Granada, Spain
Keyword(s):
Volume Visualization, Isosurfaces, Marching Cubes, Marching Tetrahedra.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Rendering
;
Volume Rendering
Abstract:
Three dimensional datasets representing scalar fields are frequently rendered using isosurfaces. For datasets arranged as a cubic lattice, the marching cubes algorithm is the most used isosurface extraction method. However, the marching cubes algorithm produces some ambiguities which have been solved using different approaches that normally implying a more complex process. One of them is to tessellate the cubes into tetrahedra, and by using a similar method (marching tetrahedra), to build the isosurface. The main drawback of other tessellations is that they do not produce the same isosurface topologies as those generated by improved marching cubes algorithms. We propose an adaptive tessellation that, being independent of the isovalue, produces the same topology for all the cases. Moreover the tessellation allows isosurface to evolve continuously when the isovalue is changed smoothly without extra computations.