Drishti, a volume exploration and presentation tool

Among several rendering techniques for volumetric data, direct volume rendering is a powerful visualization tool for a wide variety of applications. This paper describes the major features of hardware based volume exploration and presentation tool - Drishti. The word, Drishti, stands for vision or insight in Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. Drishti is a cross-platform open-source volume rendering system that delivers high quality, state of the art renderings. The features in Drishti include, though not limited to, production quality rendering, volume sculpting, multi-resolution zooming, transfer function blending, profile generation, measurement tools, mesh generation, stereo/anaglyph/crosseye renderings. Ultimately, Drishti provides an intuitive and powerful interface for choreographing animations

Hardware and software improvements of volume splatting

This paper proposes different hardware-based acceleration of the three classical splatting strategies: emph{composite-every-sample}, emph{object-space sheet-buffer} and emph{image-space sheet-buffer}.Preprin

Non-photorealistic volume rendering using stippling techniques

Journal ArticleSimulating hand-drawn illustration techniques can succinctly express information in a manner that is communicative and informative. We present a framework for an interactive direct volume illustration system that simulates traditional stipple drawing. By combining the principles of artistic and scientific illustration, we explore several feature enhancement techniques to create effective, interactive visualizations of scientific and medical datasets. We also introduce a rendering mechanism that generates appropriate point lists at all resolutions during an automatic preprocess, and modifies rendering styles through different combinations of these feature enhancements. The new system is an effective way to interactively preview large, complex volume datasets in a concise, meaningful, and illustrative manner. Volume stippling is effective for many applications and provides a quick and efficient method to investigate volume models

Illustrative interactive stipple rendering

Journal ArticleAbstract-Simulating hand-drawn illustration can succinctly express information in a manner that is communicative and informative. We present a framework for an interactive direct stipple rendering of volume and surface-based objects. By combining the principles of artistic and scientific illustration, we explore several feature enhancement techniques to create effective, interactive visualizations of scientific and medical data sets. We also introduce a rendering mechanism that generates appropriate point lists at all resolutions during an automatic preprocess and modifies rendering styles through different combinations of these feature enhancements. The new system is an effective way to interactively preview large, complex volume and surface data sets in a concise, meaningful, and illustrative manner. Stippling is effective for many applications and provides a quick and efficient method to investigate both volume and surface models

Image-space sheet-buffered splatting on the GPU

Image-Space Sheet-Buffered Splatting is a popular high quality volume-rendering technique specially suitable for zoomed views of the data. On the contrary to other splatting approaches, it processes the voxels in slabs perpendicular to the viewing direction. Recently, a GPU design of this method has been proposed that considerably accelerates the rendering stage. However, the bottleneck of the method is the computation of the buckets, i.e the structure handling the voxels to be rendered in each slab. This stage of the method is done on the CPU. In this paper, we propose a new design of the method that creates and manages the buckets on the GPU. The proposed method is more than twice faster than the previous ones.Postprint (published version

Interactive manipulation of three-dimensional images

This thesis is about the design and implementation of an application for editing voxel data. We are primarily working with MRI and CT data in a medical setting, but neither the application nor the problem itself is specific to this field. Most, but not all, of the functionality is geared toward segmented datasets. In addition to being usable as an application in itself, our program should provide a prototyping framework for others who want to test algorithms and tools on three-dimensional datasets. Because of this, we have designed and documented a plugin API, and implemented a number of plugins performing different operations on the dataset. The thesis touches on a lot of problems and choices that were made while implementing the application, from the overall application design down to our choice of libraries and tools. The programming language is C++. We made a choice to rely on libraries where we could, and so we make use of Blitz++, ImageMagick, Autotools, Qt, OpenGL and Open Inventor. The finished application's capabilities are outlined, and the design, tool choices and usability of the application are discussed

Storytelling and Visualization: An Extended Survey

Throughout history, storytelling has been an effective way of conveying information and knowledge. In the field of visualization, storytelling is rapidly gaining momentum and evolving cutting-edge techniques that enhance understanding. Many communities have commented on the importance of storytelling in data visualization. Storytellers tend to be integrating complex visualizations into their narratives in growing numbers. In this paper, we present a survey of storytelling literature in visualization and present an overview of the common and important elements in storytelling visualization. We also describe the challenges in this field as well as a novel classification of the literature on storytelling in visualization. Our classification scheme highlights the open and unsolved problems in this field as well as the more mature storytelling sub-fields. The benefits offer a concise overview and a starting point into this rapidly evolving research trend and provide a deeper understanding of this topic

RTVR - a flexible Java library for interactive volume rendering

This paper presents several distinguishing design features of RTVR -- a Java-based library for interactive volume rendering. We describe, how the careful design of data structures, in our case based on voxel enumeration, and an intelligent use of lookup tables enable interactive volume rendering even on low-end PC hardware. By assigning voxels to distinct objects within the volume and by using an individual setup and combination of lookup tables for each object, object-aware rendering can be performed: different transfer functions, shading models and compositing modes (MIP, DVR) can be mixed within a single scene, while still providing rendering results in real-time