Summary

A Hardware-Assisted Hybrid Rendering Technique for Interactive Volume Visualization

Authors:

Brett Wilson and Kwan-Liu Ma, University of California, Davis
Patrick McCormick, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Abstract

Computational science simulations and three-dimensional imaging systems in use today are producing large quantities of data that range from gigabytes to petabytes in size. Direct volume rendering, using hardware-based three dimensional textures, is a common technique for interactively exploring these data sets. The most serious drawback of this approach is the finite amount of available texture memory. In this paper we introduce a hybrid volume rendering technique based on the use of hardware texture mapping and point-based rendering. This approach allows us to leverage the performance of hardware based volume rendering and the flexibilty of point rendering to enhance, or replace, areas of fine detail. Thus, storage and rendering resources are put to more efficient use than with direct volume rendering alone.