High-resolution Volume Rendering by Adaptive Resampling

Abstract

The high-resolution and comprehensive volume rendering algorithm described in this paper deals with three types of optical structures within a volume : boundaries, fuzzy boundaries, and volume intervals. After these structures are detected by isosurface-ray intersection tests, the boundaries are rendered by sophisticated shading techniques that are intensively investigated in the ray tracing society. Fuzzy boundaries are visualized using multiple-threshold semitransparent isosurfaces to weaken visible artifacts. The absorption of a volume interval is also visualized, using an absorption ratio resampled at the middle point within the interval. The images produced are free from aliasing and blur. We also show that the processing time and memory requirements are reasonable when we consider the image quality.