Authors:
D. M. Eler
1
;
P. S.H. Cateriano
1
;
L. G. Nonato
1
;
M. C.F. de Oliveira
1
and
H. Levkowitz
2
Affiliations:
1
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
;
2
University of Massachusetts Lowell, United States
Keyword(s):
Hybrid rendering, Iso-Surface rendering, Ray-Tracing, Volume on Surface.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Real-Time Rendering
;
Rendering
;
Rendering Algorithms
;
Volume Rendering
Abstract:
Surface rendering (SR) algorithms are fast, but not suited to applications that demand exploration of internal volume structures. We introduce an enhanced surface rendering algorithm - named VoS, Volume on Surface-that supports visualization of internal volume structures. VoS integrates surface and volume rendering into an efficient framework for interactive visualization of volume information. A ray casting is performed to map volume information onto a boundary surface extracted from the volume grid, enabling the display of structures internal to the surface using conventional SR. VoS thus offers a low-cost alternative to volume rendering in some practical situations, as its resulting surfaces can be rendered on commodity graphics hardware at interactive rates. Moreover, changes in the transfer functions are handled at the rendering step, rather than at the costly ray-casting operation.