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Instant Volume Visualization using Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation

S. Bruckner and M. E. Gröller

Abstract

It has long been recognized that transfer function setup for Direct Volume Rendering (DVR) is crucial to its usability. However, the task of finding an appropriate transfer function is complex and time-consuming even for experts. Thus, in many practical applications simpler techniques which do not rely on complex transfer functions are employed. One common example is Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP) which depicts the maximum value along each viewing ray. In this paper, we introduce Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation (MIDA), a new approach which combines the advantages of DVR and MIP. Like MIP, MIDA exploits common data characteristics and hence does not require complex transfer functions to generate good visualization results. It does, however, feature occlusion and shape cues similar to DVR. Furthermore, we show that MIDA - in addition to being a useful technique in its own right- can be used to smoothly transition between DVR and MIP in an intuitive manner. MIDA can be easily implemented using volume raycasting and achieves real-time performance on current graphics hardware.

S. Bruckner and M. E. Gröller, "Instant Volume Visualization using Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation," Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 28, iss. 3, p. 775–782, 2009. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01474.x
[BibTeX]

It has long been recognized that transfer function setup for Direct Volume Rendering (DVR) is crucial to its usability. However, the task of finding an appropriate transfer function is complex and time-consuming even for experts. Thus, in many practical applications simpler techniques which do not rely on complex transfer functions are employed. One common example is Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP) which depicts the maximum value along each viewing ray. In this paper, we introduce Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation (MIDA), a new approach which combines the advantages of DVR and MIP. Like MIP, MIDA exploits common data characteristics and hence does not require complex transfer functions to generate good visualization results. It does, however, feature occlusion and shape cues similar to DVR. Furthermore, we show that MIDA - in addition to being a useful technique in its own right- can be used to smoothly transition between DVR and MIP in an intuitive manner. MIDA can be easily implemented using volume raycasting and achieves real-time performance on current graphics hardware.
@ARTICLE {Bruckner-2009-IVV,
author = "Stefan Bruckner and Meister Eduard Gr{\"o}ller",
title = "Instant Volume Visualization using Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation",
journal = "Computer Graphics Forum",
year = "2009",
volume = "28",
number = "3",
pages = "775--782",
month = "jun",
abstract = "It has long been recognized that transfer function setup for Direct  Volume Rendering (DVR) is crucial to its usability. However, the  task of finding an appropriate transfer function is complex and time-consuming  even for experts. Thus, in many practical applications simpler techniques  which do not rely on complex transfer functions are employed. One  common example is Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP) which depicts  the maximum value along each viewing ray. In this paper, we introduce  Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation (MIDA), a new approach  which combines the advantages of DVR and MIP. Like MIP, MIDA exploits  common data characteristics and hence does not require complex transfer  functions to generate good visualization results. It does, however,  feature occlusion and shape cues similar to DVR. Furthermore, we  show that MIDA - in addition to being a useful technique in its own  right- can be used to smoothly transition between DVR and MIP in  an intuitive manner. MIDA can be easily implemented using volume  raycasting and achieves real-time performance on current graphics  hardware.",
pdf = "pdfs/Bruckner-2009-IVV.pdf",
images = "images/Bruckner-2009-IVV.jpg",
thumbnails = "images/Bruckner-2009-IVV.png",
youtube = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNwZJXxoLTg,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-Zp3S35hs,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk4J8bkI2-Y,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XApq2rGKMR8",
issn = "0167-7055",
affiliation = "tuwien",
doi = "10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01474.x",
event = "EuroVis 2009",
keywords = "illustrative visualization, maximum intensity projection, direct volume rendering",
location = "Berlin, Germany",
url = "//www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2009/bruckner-2009-IVV/"
}
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