GPU Volume Raycasting using Bounding Interval Hierarchies

Information

• Publication Type: Student Project
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Visualization Group
• Date: 2009
• Matrikelnummer: 0326997
• First Supervisor: Erald Vucini

Abstract

Traditional Direct Volume Raycasting (DVR) on the GPU is limited to uniform voxel grids stored as 3D textures. This approach is not optimal for sparse data sets or data sets with highly varying frequencies because it requires a trade-off between data structure size and the maximum reproducible frequency and it lacks implicit empty space skipping during raycasting. In this paper we present another approach, applying the Bounding Interval Hierarchy (BIH), a hierarchical spatial subdivision of elements traditionally used to accelerate surface raytracing, to volume raycasting on the GPU. Although connectivity information between voxels is lost and the texture filtering power of GPUs cannot be exploited, we show that it may be a viable alternative for DVR and that the approach is generic, allowing all sorts of renderable voxels (not-overlapping finite volume elements/primitives such as cuboids, ellipsoids and truncated Radial Basis Functions) for different tasks like rendering point sets as particle systems (e.g. using spherical voxels) and rendering volumes derived from traditional uniform grids (with implicit empty space skipping and the option for different levels of detail).

Additional Files and Images

Weblinks

No further information available.

BibTeX

@studentproject{Kinkelin_2009,
  title =      "GPU Volume Raycasting using Bounding Interval Hierarchies",
  author =     "Martin Kinkelin",
  year =       "2009",
  abstract =   "Traditional Direct Volume Raycasting (DVR) on the GPU is
               limited to uniform voxel grids stored as 3D textures. This
               approach is not optimal for sparse data sets or data sets
               with highly varying frequencies because it requires a
               trade-off between data structure size and the maximum
               reproducible frequency and it lacks implicit empty space
               skipping during raycasting. In this paper we present another
               approach, applying the Bounding Interval Hierarchy (BIH), a
               hierarchical spatial subdivision of elements traditionally
               used to accelerate surface raytracing, to volume raycasting
               on the GPU. Although connectivity information between voxels
               is lost and the texture filtering power of GPUs cannot be
               exploited, we show that it may be a viable alternative for
               DVR and that the approach is generic, allowing all sorts of
               renderable voxels (not-overlapping finite volume
               elements/primitives such as cuboids, ellipsoids and
               truncated Radial Basis Functions) for different tasks like
               rendering point sets as particle systems (e.g. using
               spherical voxels) and rendering volumes derived from
               traditional uniform grids (with implicit empty space
               skipping and the option for different levels of detail).",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2009/Kinkelin_2009/",
}