Volumetric Illumination Research Articles

Rainbow Imaging Of 3-D Microbubble Distribution Clustered Inside A Turbulent Boundary Layer

Microbubbles dispersed in a turbulent boundary layer spatially developing along a flat plate is investigated experimentally. The aim of study is to find out visually how microbubbles interact with turbulent eddies to achieve frictional drag reduction on a wall. For stream Reynolds number up to 3×104 , microbubble suspended at Stokes number smaller than 10 − 3 is measured. Stream-wise vortices in the boundary layer were visualized by flake optics, of which spacing expands with injection of microbubbles. 3-D microbubble distributions were measured by a color-coded volumetric illumination applied to the boundary layer. The result showed preferentially accumulated microbubble clouds to low-speed streaks close to viscous sublayer and to hair-pin vortices in the buffer layer.

Photon Field Networks for Dynamic Real-Time Volumetric Global Illumination.

Volume data is commonly found in many scientific disciplines, like medicine, physics, and biology. Experts rely on robust scientific visualization techniques to extract valuable insights from the data. Recent years have shown path tracing to be the preferred approach for volumetric rendering, given its high levels of realism. However, real-time volumetric path tracing often suffers from stochastic noise and long convergence times, limiting interactive exploration. In this paper, we present a novel method to enable real-time global illumination for volume data visualization. We develop Photon Field Networks-a phase-function-aware, multi-light neural representation of indirect volumetric global illumination. The fields are trained on multi-phase photon caches that we compute a priori. Training can be done within seconds, after which the fields can be used in various rendering tasks. To showcase their potential, we develop a custom neural path tracer, with which our photon fields achieve interactive framerates even on large datasets. We conduct in-depth evaluations of the method's performance, including visual quality, stochastic noise, inference and rendering speeds, and accuracy regarding illumination and phase function awareness. Results are compared to ray marching, path tracing and photon mapping. Our findings show that Photon Field Networks can faithfully represent indirect global illumination within the boundaries of the trained phase spectrum while exhibiting less stochastic noise and rendering at a significantly faster rate than traditional methods.

A Clinical User Study Investigating the Benefits of Adaptive Volumetric Illumination Sampling.

Accurate and fast understanding of the patient's anatomy is crucial in surgical decision making and particularly important in visceral surgery. Sophisticated visualization techniques such as 3D Volume Rendering can aid the surgeon and potentially lead to a benefit for the patient. Recently, we proposed a novel volume rendering technique called Adaptive Volumetric Illumination Sampling (AVIS) that can generate realistic lighting in real-time, even for high resolution images and volumes but without introducing additional image noise. In order to evaluate this new technique, we conducted a randomized, three-period crossover study comparing AVIS to conventional Direct Volume Rendering (DVR) and Path Tracing (PT). CT datasets from 12 patients were evaluated by 10 visceral surgeons who were either senior physicians or experienced specialists. The time needed for answering clinically relevant questions as well as the correctness of the answers were analyzed for each visualization technique. In addition to that, the perceived workload during these tasks was assessed for each technique, respectively. The results of the study indicate that AVIS has an advantage in terms of both time efficiency and most aspects of the perceived workload, while the average correctness of the given answers was very similar for all three methods. In contrast to that, Path Tracing seems to show particularly high values for mental demand and frustration. We plan to repeat a similar study with a larger participant group to consolidate the results.

Volumetric absorption illumination induced by laser radiation in a 2D thermoelastic microelongated semiconductor body with temperature-dependent properties

In this paper, we construct a new model based on the coupling of thermoelasticity, plasma, and microelongation effect under volumetric absorption of laser pulse. Three different thermoelasticity theories are applied to construct the new model in a 2D thermoelastic semiconducting medium whose properties are temperature-dependent. The medium surface is exposed to laser radiation having spatial and temporal Gaussian distributions; in addition, the surface is considered traction-free. The general solutions were obtained analytically via Laplace and Fourier transformations; for Laplace inverse, we use the well-known Riemann sum approximation. As an application and consistency validation, silicon material is used.

Rainbow-Color Imaging Of Microbubbles Strongly Clustering In A Turbulent Boundary Layer

Rainbow-color volumetric illumination for visualizing 3D microbubble distributions was examined in order to find microbubble clustering in a spatially developing turbulent boundary layer. The color coding was defined according to the wall unit from 0 to 200, straddling viscous-sub layer, buffer layer and log-law region. This allowed understanding where the microbubbles were accumulated or diffused within the boundary layer. The results showed microbubble clouding in the low-speed streak regions along the viscous sublayer, clustering into cores of streamwise vortices ejected into the buffer layer, and intermittent exhaust of the clusters toward the log-law region. Furthermore, correlation of these behaviors with local Reynolds shear stress event (ejection, sweep) was found with quadrant analysis of the liquid velocity vector data obtained by PIV.

Three-dimensional particle size determination in a laminar diffusion flame by tomographic laser-induced incandescence

Non-intrusive measurement techniques are required to gain a comprehensive understanding about the processes of soot formation, growth and oxidation. Time-resolved laser-induced incandescence (TiRe-LII), commonly performed 0D or 2D within a flame, has proven to be a very suitable tool for the in situ sizing of soot primary particles. In this work, the technique is expanded to the third dimension by employing volumetric illumination and coupling it with a tomographic approach, which allows to computationally gain 3D information from 2D images taken at various angles. To minimize experimental cost, an approach using nine fiber bundles arranged in a semicircle around the flame and imaging the light onto a single camera is used. The technique is demonstrated on an ethene diffusion flame on a standard burner, providing spatially resolved 3D particle sizes. One focus of this work is to reveal the influence of input parameters such as the local bath gas temperature, which we measured by two-color pyrometry, and local laser fluence, which are both required for an accurate evaluation of the local particle size. It is shown that the assumption of an average temperature may result in a wrong picture even of qualitative soot size evaluation. In the end, a concept is proposed for a simultaneous determination of the 3D distribution of particle sizes through TiRe-LII and the required bath gas temperature via two-color pyrometry using a tomographic approach with only three cameras.

Color-coded visualization of microbubble clouds interacting with eddies in a spatially developing turbulent boundary layer

Three-dimensional distribution of microbubbles dispersed in a turbulent boundary layer spatially developing along a flat plate is investigated experimentally. The aim of study is to find out visually how microbubbles interact with turbulent eddies to achieve frictional drag reduction on a wall. Setting conditions of the experiments are stream Reynolds number up to 2.3 × 104, microbubble volume fraction inside boundary layer less than 10−5, and microbubble Stokes number smaller than 10−3. Stream-wise vortices in the boundary layer were visualized by flake optics, of which spacing expands with injection of microbubbles. 3-D microbubble distributions were visualized by a color-coded volumetric illumination. The result showed preferentially accumulated microbubble clouds to low-speed streaks close to viscous sublayer and to hair-pin vortices in the buffer layer, leading to reduced diffusivity of microbubbles relative to the turbulent momentum diffusivity.

A study of the spatial and temporal evolution of auto-ignition kernels using time-resolved tomographic OH-LIF

In this paper, the spatial and temporal evolution of auto-ignition kernels from methane jets propagating into a NOx-vitiated, high-turbulence, hot air co-flow was studied by means of time-resolved tomographic laser-induced fluorescence of OH (Tomo OH-LIF). Measurements were performed using a burst dye laser system at 10 kHz for volumetric laser illumination and a multi-camera arrangement (8-views) for detection of the fluorescence signal. Auto-ignition kernels were detected three-dimensionally and tracked using a robust algorithm based on the intensity gradient of the volumetrically reconstructed signals. The size and location of the detected kernels were evaluated for operating conditions with different Reynolds numbers of the fuel jet. Results showed that auto-ignition randomly occurred with high probability in a well defined fairly axisymmetric radial region with strong fluctuations in the main direction of the flow. The increase of the Reynolds number of the fuel jet resulted in a radial spread of the location of auto-ignition events. The statistical evaluation of the orientation and growth of auto-ignition kernels with respect to the mean flow field showed that the kernels were oriented tangentially to the flow and temporally evolve towards this preferential direction as the ignition events progressed.

Light extraction from fundamental modes in modulated waveguides for homogeneous side-emission

Dedicated control of axial light emission from light-guides enables a new generation of functional light sources for volumetric illumination. A primary challenge is to ensure homogeneous emission intensity across the full length of the device. Here, we introduce an approach towards homogeneously side-emitting waveguides which do not rely on imposing local scattering centers such as bubbles, micro-/nanoparticles, and rough or abrupt interfaces, but on modulated core radius. Previous quantitative studies of the relationship between structural parameters and radiation losses provide initial conditions for tailoring side-emission through core-diameter modulations, however, with strongly limited amplitude of modulation. We now employ and verify numerical simulation to overcome this limitation towards meter-long homogeneously side-emitting waveguides in which the amplitude of core-diameter modulation is of the same order of magnitude as the core diameter itself. Similar emission properties can be obtained through modulation of the core refractive index instead of the core diameter, or through a combination of both approaches. Using the present model, we deduce exemplary conditions for homogeneous side-emission in which the power flow within the waveguides decays linearly, what may present another interesting feature for applications beyond illumination.

Tomographic imaging of OH laser-induced fluorescence in laminar and turbulent jet flames

In this paper a new approach for 3D flame structure diagnostics using tomographic laser-induced fluorescence (Tomo-LIF) of the OH radical was evaluated. The approach combined volumetric illumination with a multi-camera detection system of eight views. Single-shot measurements were performed in a methane/air premixed laminar flame and in a non-premixed turbulent methane jet flame. 3D OH fluorescence distributions in the flames were reconstructed using the simultaneous multiplicative algebraic reconstruction technique. The tomographic measurements were compared and validated against results of OH-PLIF in the laminar flame. The effects of the experimental setup of the detection system and the size of the volumetric illumination on the quality of the tomographic reconstructions were evaluated. Results revealed that the Tomo-LIF is suitable for volumetric reconstruction of flame structures with acceptable spatial resolution and uncertainty. It was found that the number of views and their angular orientation have a strong influence on the quality and accuracy of the tomographic reconstruction while the illumination volume thickness influences mainly the spatial resolution.

A modified particle tracking velocimetry technique to characterize sprinkler irrigation drops

Numerous methodologies have been developed to characterize sprinkler irrigation drops with the purpose of improving irrigation efficiency and controlling soil erosion and compaction. This paper presents the laboratory characterization of the morphology and velocity of drops in their free-falling trajectory as influenced by drop diameter and wind speed. For this purpose, a particle tracking velocimetry technique with in-line volumetric illumination was implemented. Hypodermic needles were used to produce droplets of uniform size. Two needle diameters resulted in drops with average diameters of 1.94 and 2.94 mm. Drops were illuminated with a double-pulsed laser beam or an LED lamp. Drop characterization reached an elevation of 4.28 m and occasionally attained terminal velocity. Motion blur was suppressed using a deconvolution filter. Drop equivalent diameter, velocity, chord ratio, canting angle and trajectory angle were determined using an ad-hoc software. The experimental approach led to the measurement of real drop size by illuminating a volume in the capture zone; drop shape ranged from quasi-sphere to ellipsoid. Drop deformation was more intense under high wind speeds. Ballistic simulations of drop fall were performed using sphere and ellipsoid drag force models. Both models resulted in excellent agreement with measured drop velocity, with the ellipsoid model performing marginally better. The robustness of the experimental equipment, particularly in combination with the developed LED lamp, announces future outdoor applications in real sprinkler irrigated fields. Such applications will provide insight on the governing processes, and data sets for the improvement of sprinkler simulation models.

Lighting grid hierarchy for self-illuminating explosions

Rendering explosions with self-illumination is a challenging problem. Explosions contain animated volumetric light sources immersed in animated smoke that cast volumetric shadows, which play an essential role and are expensive to compute. We propose an efficient solution that redefines this problem as rendering with many animated lights by converting the volumetric lighting data into a large number of point lights. Focusing on temporal coherency to avoid flickering in animations, we introduce lighting grid hierarchy for approximating the volumetric illumination at different resolutions. Using this structure we can efficiently approximate the lighting at any point inside or outside of the explosion volume as a mixture of lighting contributions from all levels of the hierarchy. As a result, we are able to capture high-frequency details of local illumination, as well as the potentially strong impact of distant illumination. Most importantly, this hierarchical structure allows us to efficiently precompute volumetric shadows, which substantially accelerates the lighting computation. Finally, we provide a scalable approach for computing the multiple scattering of light within the smoke volume using our lighting grid hierarchy. Temporal coherency is achieved by relying on continuous formulations at all stages of the lighting approximation. We show that our method is efficient and effective approximating the self-illumination of explosions with visually indistinguishable results, as compared to path tracing. We also show that our method can be applied to other problems involving a large number of (animated) point lights.

In vivo volumetric fluorescence sectioning microscopy with mechanical-scan-free hybrid illumination imaging

Optical sectioning microscopy in wide-field fashion has been widely used to obtain three-dimensional images of biological samples; however, it requires scanning in depth and considerable time to acquire multiple depth information of a volumetric sample. In this paper, in vivo optical sectioning microscopy with volumetric hybrid illumination, with no mechanical moving parts, is presented. The proposed system is configured such that the optical sectioning is provided by hybrid illumination using a digital micro-mirror device (DMD) for uniform and non-uniform pattern projection, while the depth of imaging planes is varied by using an electrically tunable-focus lens with invariant magnification and resolution. We present and characterize the design, implementation, and experimentally demonstrate the proposed system's ability through 3D imaging of in vivo Canenorhabditis elegans' growth cones.

Progressive light volume for interactive volumetric illumination

AbstractWe propose a technique named progressive light volume to support advanced volumetric illumination effects, such as single scattering and multi scattering. The light volume stores direct lighting information for sample points of the volume data. Using the light volume, we are able to compute the direct lighting for any point in the volume data with a single texture lookup. In order to keep the rendering at an interactive frame rate, we build the light volume progressively if necessary. During the light volume construction period, we use a fast ray casting algorithm to produce a rough rendering estimate from the light volume. After the light volume is built, we use a path tracer to continuously estimate the light intensity for each pixel. Our method puts no restrictions on the number, position, and type of lights. We conducted a comprehensive evaluation for various datasets. The rendering results show that our method is able to produce compelling images, and the performance results indicate that our method is practical for interactive use. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Multimodal volume illumination

Despite the increasing importance of multimodal volumetric data acquisition and the recent progress in advanced volume illumination, interactive multimodal volume illumination remains an open challenge. As a consequence, the perceptual benefits of advanced volume illumination algorithms cannot be exploited when visualizing multimodal data – a scenario where increased data complexity urges for improved spatial comprehension. The two main factors hindering the application of advanced volumetric illumination models to multimodal data sets are rendering complexity and memory consumption. Solving the volume rendering integral by considering multimodal illumination increases the sampling complexity. At the same time, the increased storage requirements of multimodal data sets forbid to exploit precomputation results, which are often facilitated by advanced volume illumination algorithms to reduce the amount of per-frame computations. In this paper, we propose an interactive volume rendering approach that supports advanced illumination when visualizing multimodal volumetric data sets. The presented approach has been developed with the goal to simplify and minimize per-sample operations, while at the same time reducing the memory requirements. We will show how to exploit illumination-importance metrics, to compress and transform multimodal data sets into an illumination-aware representation, which is accessed during rendering through a novel light-space-based volume rendering algorithm. Both, data transformation and rendering algorithm, are closely intervened by taking compression errors into account during rendering. We describe and analyze the presented approach in detail, and apply it to real-world multimodal data sets from biology, medicine, meteorology and engineering.

Speckle-based volume holographic microscopy for optically sectioned multi-plane fluorescent imaging.

Structured illumination microscopy has been widely used to reconstruct optically sectioned fluorescence images in wide-field fashion; however, it still requires axial scanning to obtain multiple depth information of a volumetric sample. In this paper, a new imaging scheme, called speckle-based volume holographic microscopy system, is presented. The proposed system incorporates volumetric speckle illumination and multiplexed volume holographic gratings to acquire multi-plane images with optical sectioning capability, without any axial scanning. We present the design, implementation, and experimental image data demonstrating the proposed system's ability to simultaneously obtain wide-field, optically sectioned, and multi-depth resolved images of fluorescently labeled microspheres and tissue structures.

A Survey of Volumetric Illumination Techniques for Interactive Volume Rendering

AbstractInteractive volume rendering in its standard formulation has become an increasingly important tool in many application domains. In recent years several advanced volumetric illumination techniques to be used in interactive scenarios have been proposed. These techniques claim to have perceptual benefits as well as being capable of producing more realistic volume rendered images. Naturally, they cover a wide spectrum of illumination effects, including varying shading and scattering effects. In this survey, we review and classify the existing techniques for advanced volumetric illumination. The classification will be conducted based on their technical realization, their performance behaviour as well as their perceptual capabilities. Based on the limitations revealed in this review, we will define future challenges in the area of interactive advanced volumetric illumination.

LCD-projector-based 3D color PTV

Color-based three-dimensional (3D) Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) using a single camera and an liquid crystal display (LCD) projector, which can measure the out-of-plane velocity component from particle color information, is improved for practical use in 3D velocimetry without losing the original simplicity on the optical configuration of planner 2D PTV. To minimize the uncertainties in identifying the representative color of particles, we propose new color identifying algorithms that average hue in polar rather than linear coordinates. The proposed algorithm, a saturation-weighted-averaged hue in polar coordinates, yields smaller standard deviations than conventional algorithms: 1.4% in hue and 2.0% in position detection. Use of a multiple color-cycle gradation light for volumetric illumination of the fluid layers also improves the resolution of the position and velocity measurements in the depth direction. The proposed measurement technique can display the flow patterns of an axisymmetric rotating flow from instantaneous 3D–3C velocity vector fields, as well as the vortex structure of an unsteady flow represented as iso-surfaces of enstrophy density.

Pulsed, high-power LED illumination for tomographic particle image velocimetry

This paper investigates the use of high-power light-emitting diode (LED) illumination for tomographic particle image velocimetry (PIV) as an alternative to traditional laser-based illumination. Modern solid-state LED devices can provide averaged radiant power in excess of 10 W and by operating the LED with short high current pulses theoretical pulse energies up to several tens of mJ can be achieved. In the present work, a custom-built drive circuit is used to drive a Luminus PT-120 high-power LED at pulsed currents of up to 150 A and 1 μs duration. Volumetric illumination is achieved by directly projecting the LED into the flow to produce a measurement volume of ≈3–4 times the size of the LED die. The feasibility of the volumetric LED illumination is assessed by performing tomographic PIV of homogenous, grid-generated turbulence. Two types of LEDs are investigated, and the results are compared with measurements of the same flow using pulsed Nd:YAG laser illumination and DNS data of homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The quality of the results is similar for both investigated LEDs with no significant difference between the LED and Nd:YAG illumination. Compared with the DNS, some differences are observed in the power spectra and the probability distributions of the fluctuating velocity and velocity gradients. These differences are attributed to the limited spatial resolution of the experiments and noise introduced during the tomographic reconstruction (i.e. ghost particles). The uncertainty in the velocity measurements associated with the LED illumination is estimated to approximately 0.2–0.3 pixel for both LEDs, which compares favourably with similar tomographic PIV measurements of turbulent flows. In conclusion, the proposed high-power, pulsed LED volume illumination provides accurate and reliable tomographic PIV measurements in water and presents a promising technique for flow diagnostics and velocimetry.

A vision-based hybrid particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) technique using a modified cascade correlation peak-finding method

A novel technique for particle tracking velocimetry is presented in this paper to overcome the issue of overlapping particle images encountered in the flows with high particle density or under volumetric illumination conditions. To achieve this goal, algorithms for particle identification and tracking are developed based on current methods and validated with both synthetic and experimental image sets. The results from synthetic image tests show that the particle identification algorithm is able to resolve overlapped particle images up to 50 % under noisy conditions, while keeping the root mean square peak location error under 0.07 pixels. The algorithm is also robust to the size changes up to a size ratio of 5. The tracking method developed from a classic computer vision matching algorithm is capable of capturing a velocity gradient up to 0.3 while maintaining the error under 0.2 pixels. Sensitivity tests were performed to describe the optimum conditions for the technique in terms of particle image density, particle image sizes and velocity gradients, also its sensitivity to errors of the PIV results that guide the tracking process. The comparison with other existing tracking techniques demonstrates that this technique is able to resolve more vectors out of a dense particle image field.