Chapter 8 - Advanced Direct Volume Visualization

Abstract

With the advent of modern GPUs, an increasing number of existing algorithms have been adapted, or new algorithms have been specifically developed to enable advanced GPU-based volume rendering. As a consequence, it became possible to reach interactive frame rates even for large datasets and when using high sampling rates. With the further development of modern GPUs, more computation time was available during rendering and thus the usage of more advanced algorithms became feasible. Since these approaches should be considered as extensions to the existing volume rendering paradigms rather than new algorithms, we describe them separately within this chapter. We have grouped the covered advanced direct volume rendering algorithms into two classes, based on the main challenges which have been addressed. Advanced volume rendering techniques are motivated to a large extent by perceptual issues. Thus, color, contrast, and gray value perception are essential. In addition, we discuss how advanced rendering supports the interpretation of spatial relations.