Data-dependent gradient quantization scheme for the acceleration of volume rendering

Peer-Timo Bremer; Oliver Kreylos; Bernd Hamann

doi:10.1117/12.424917

3 May 2001 Data-dependent gradient quantization scheme for the acceleration of volume rendering

Peer-Timo Bremer, Oliver Kreylos, Bernd Hamann

Proceedings Volume 4302, Visual Data Exploration and Analysis VIII; (2001) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.424917
Event: Photonics West 2001 - Electronic Imaging, 2001, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Volume rendering requires the use of gradient information used as surface normal information, for application of lighting models. However, for interactive applications on- the-fly calculation of gradients is too slow. The common solution to this problem is to quantize gradients of trivariate scalar fields and pre-compute a look-up table prior to the application of a volume rendering method. A number of techniques have been proposed for the quantization of normal vectors, but few have been applied to or adapted for the purpose of volume rendering. We describe a new data- dependent method to quantize gradients using an even number of vectors in a table. The quantization scheme we use is based on a tessellation of the unit sphere. This tessellation represents an 'optimally' distributed set of unit normal vectors. Staring with a random tessellation, we optimize the size and distribution of the tiles with a simulated annealing approach.

Citation Download Citation

Peer-Timo Bremer, Oliver Kreylos, and Bernd Hamann "Data-dependent gradient quantization scheme for the acceleration of volume rendering", Proc. SPIE 4302, Visual Data Exploration and Analysis VIII, (3 May 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.424917

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