Utilization of the Volume Rendering with Spherical Sampling Method to Immersive VR System

Abstract

A volume rendering is widely used for intuitively understanding 3-dimensionaly distribution of physical quantities. When the quantities have a nest-like distribution, however, the inside distribution cannot be observed. As one of the solution, an immersive virtual reality (VR) system is useful, since the researcher can immersively observe the distribution by using such a system. However, a plane slice sampling method conventionally used in the volume rendering has a problem that the quality of visualized images deteriorates especially in the immersive VR system. To resolve the problem, a spherical surface sampling method is applied to the volume rendering in the immersive VR system. The quality of image and the display speed are compared between these two methods.