Colloquy Cycle WS 2007/2008

Current Schedule
Previous Schedules

In the winter term of 2007/2008 the following talks will be organized by our Institute. The talks are partially financed by the "Arbeitskreis Graphische Datenverarbeitung" of the OCG (Austrian Computer Society)

• Colloquy Cycle SS07
• Colloquy Cycle WS06/07
• Colloquy Cycle SS06
• Colloquy Cycle WS05/06
• Colloquy Cycle SS05
• Colloquy Cycle WS04/05
• Colloquy Cycle SS04
• Colloquy Cycle WS03/04
• Colloquy Cycle SS03
• Colloquy Cycle WS02/03
• Colloquy Cycle SS02
• Colloquy Cycle WS01/02
• Colloquy Cycle SS01
• Colloquy Cycle WS00/01
• Colloquy Cycle SS00
• Colloquy Cycle WS99/00
• Colloquy Cycle SS99
• Colloquy Cycle WS98/99
• Colloquy Cycle SS98
• Colloquy Cycle WS97/98
• Colloquy Cycle SS97
• Colloquy Cycle WS96/97

Ole Ciliox, ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany

The traditional development of virtual and augmented reality applications usually relied on expensive workstation hardware and custom developed software. Today, this approach seems not reasonable anymore. Alone the development of a modern rendering pipeline for the application can consume several man-months. However, modern game engines incorporate modern and highly efficient rendering pipelines that could support the application development on higher levels. This talk introduces important terms and definitions, presents some examples like the adoption with spatially immersive projector-based displays (SIDs) and shows some problems that are inherent to game engines.
 

Hendrik Lensch, Germany

The appearance of real-world objects depends on the incident illumination, on the 3D geometry of the object, and on the reflection properties of the object's surfaces. Reflectance fields capture the resulting global light transport in such a way that the object can be relit in arbitrary virtual environments faithfully reproducing the appearance of the original. In this talk I will present an overview about our current work on acquiring and processing reflectance fields. One part will cover acquisition techniques that are able to measure the global light transport within a scene on a ray-to-ray basis allowing for capturing and reproducing effects such as subsurface scattering, refractions and caustics. One remaining problem is that reflectance fields are typically acquired only for a discrete set of incident light directions. A rotation in the incident illumination is likely to produce artifacts due to this coarse sampling. In the second part I therefore will address the problem of upsampling reflectance fields in the light domain allowing for smoothly moving shadows and highlights when light sources move around the scene.
 

Vlastimil Havran, Czech Technical University in Prague

In this talk we show how biased methods based on density estimation of photon hits such as photon maps can be extended. Instead of using photon hits as in photon maps and combining them with final gathering we exploit the photon paths in two ways. First, we make density estimation in ray space of photon paths, which reduces bias. Second, we reverse the process of density estimation and splat energy of photons around the cones of photon paths. We show the results and timings of the image synthesis based on the two new methods and the differences to traditional photon mapping.
 

Charl Botha, Delft University of Technology

With the recent advancements in biomedical imaging technology, molecular processes in the cell can now be brought directly in relation to structural and functional changes at higher levels. Functional imaging (optical, nuclear and MR with targeted contrast agents) provides a window on cellular biochemistry and gene expression, while structural imaging (CT, MR, ultrasound) may be used to measure the resulting structural changes in the whole body. Disease processes and treatment effects can now be followed over time, from molecule to organism, both in pre-clinical small animal models and in humans.
For a single time point, a molecular imaging study may consist of photographs, photon emission images, serial CT, MR or PET slices, functional MR imaging, MR spectroscopy, and histology. We have recently started working on new visualization techniques that will enable the in-depth visual exploration of relations between disease evolution, underlying molecular processes and structural and functional changes that are locked up in combined molecular, functional and structural imaging data.
This talk starts with a brief overview of the TU Delft Medical Visualisation group and its research activities. I will then introduce molecular imaging and the role of visualisation in this new field, after which I will present our latest results on a visualisation system for bioluminescence imaging and on whole-body articulated registration for small animal imaging.