Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Volume Rendering methods employing the GPU capabilities offer high performance on off-the-shelf hardware.In this article, we discuss the various bottlenecks found in the graphics hardware when performing GPU-based Volume Rendering.The specific properties of each bottleneck and the trade-offs between them are described.Further we present a novel strategy to balance the load on the identified bottlenecks, without compromising the image quality.Our strategy introduces a two-staged space-skipping, whereby the first stage applies bricking on a semi-regular grid, and the second stage uses octrees to reach a finer granularity.Additionally we apply early ray termination to the bricks.We demonstrate how the two stages address the individual bottlenecks, and how they can be tuned for a specific hardware pipeline.The described method takes into account that the rendered volume may exceed the available texture memory.Our approach further allows fast run-time changes of the transfer function.
Authors: Ruijters, Daniel, Vilanova, Anna
Institutions: Philips (Netherlands), Eindhoven University of Technology
Language: English
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2144361241