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

Meshless Mechanics and Point-Based Visualization Methods for Surgical Simulations

Computer-based modeling and simulation practices have become an integral part of the medical education field. For surgical simulation applications, realistic constitutive modeling of soft tissue is considered to be one of the most challenging aspects of the problem, because biomechanical soft-tissue models need to reflect the correct elastic response, have to be efficient in order to run at interactive simulation rates, and be able to support operations such as cuts and sutures. Mesh-based solutions, where the connections between the individual degrees of freedom (DoF) are defined explicitly, have been the traditional choice to approach these problems. However, when the problem under investigation contains a discontinuity that disrupts the connectivity between the DoFs, the underlying mesh structure has to be reconfigured in order to handle the newly introduced discontinuity correctly. This reconfiguration for mesh-based techniques is typically called dynamic remeshing, and most of the time it causes the performance bottleneck in the simulation. In this dissertation, the efficiency of point-based meshless methods is investigated for both constitutive modeling of elastic soft tissues and visualization of simulation objects, where arbitrary discontinuities/cuts are applied to the objects in the context of surgical simulation. The point-based deformable object modeling problem is examined in three functional aspects: modeling continuous elastic deformations with, handling discontinuities in, and visualizing a point-based object. Algorithmic and implementation details of the presented techniques are discussed in the dissertation. The presented point-based techniques are implemented as separate components and integrated into the open-source software framework SOFA. The presented meshless continuum mechanics model of elastic tissue were verified by comparing it to the Hertzian non-adhesive frictionless contact theory. Virtual experiments were setup with a point-based deformable block and a rigid indenter, and force-displacement curves obtained from the virtual experiments were compared to the theoretical solutions. The meshless mechanics model of soft tissue and the integrated novel discontinuity treatment technique discussed in this dissertation allows handling cuts of arbitrary shape. The implemented enrichment technique not only modifies the internal mechanics of the soft tissue model, but also updates the point-based visual representation in an efficient way preventing the use of costly dynamic remeshing operations

New techniques for the scientific visualization of three-dimensional multi-variate and vector fields

Volume rendering allows us to represent a density cloud with ideal properties (single scattering, no self-shadowing, etc.). Scientific visualization utilizes this technique by mapping an abstract variable or property in a computer simulation to a synthetic density cloud. This thesis extends volume rendering from its limitation of isotropic density clouds to anisotropic and/or noisy density clouds. Design aspects of these techniques are discussed that aid in the comprehension of scientific information. Anisotropic volume rendering is used to represent vector based quantities in scientific visualization. Velocity and vorticity in a fluid flow, electric and magnetic waves in an electromagnetic simulation, and blood flow within the body are examples of vector based information within a computer simulation or gathered from instrumentation. Understand these fields can be crucial to understanding the overall physics or physiology. Three techniques for representing three-dimensional vector fields are presented: Line Bundles, Textured Splats and Hair Splats. These techniques are aimed at providing a high-level (qualitative) overview of the flows, offering the user a substantial amount of information with a single image or animation. Non-homogenous volume rendering is used to represent multiple variables. Computer simulations can typically have over thirty variables, which describe properties whose understanding are useful to the scientist. Trying to understand each of these separately can be time consuming. Trying to understand any cause and effect relationships between different variables can be impossible. NoiseSplats is introduced to represent two or more properties in a single volume rendering of the data. This technique is also aimed at providing a qualitative overview of the flows

Compression domain volume rendering for distributed environments

This paper describes a method for volume data compression and rendering which bases on wavelet splats. The underlying concept is especially designed for distributed and networked applications, where we assume a remote server to maintain large scale volume data sets, being inspected, browsed through and rendered interactively by a local client. Therefore, we encode the server‘s volume data using a newly designed wavelet based volume compression method. A local client can render the volumes immediately from the compression domain by using wavelet footprints, a method proposed earlier. In addition, our setup features full progression, where the rendered image is refined progressively as data comes in. Furthermore, framerate constraints are considered by controlling the quality of the image both locally and globally depending on the current network bandwidth or computational capabilities of the client. As a very important aspect of our setup, the client does not need to provide storage for the volume data and can be implemented in terms of a network application. The underlying framework enables to exploit all advantageous properties of the wavelet transform and forms a basis for both sophisticated lossy compression and rendering. Although coming along with simple illumination and constant exponential decay, the rendering method is especially suited for fast interactive inspection of large data sets and can be supported easily by graphics hardware

Multivariate volume rendering

This paper presents a new technique for representing multivalued data sets defined on an integer lattice. It extends the state-of-the-art in volume rendering to include nonhomogeneous volume representations. That is, volume rendering of materials with very fine detail (e.g. translucent granite) within a voxel. Multivariate volume rendering is achieved by introducing controlled amounts of noise within the volume representation. Varying the local amount of noise within the volume is used to represent a separate scalar variable. The technique can also be used in image synthesis to create more realistic clouds and fog

The State of the Art in Flow Visualization: Dense and Texture-Based Techniques

Flow visualization has been a very attractive component of scientific visualization research for a long time. Usually very large multivariate datasets require processing. These datasets often consist of a large number of sample locations and several time steps. The steadily increasing performance of computers has recently become a driving factor for a reemergence in flow visualization research, especially in texture-based techniques. In this paper, dense, texture-based flow visualization techniques are discussed. This class of techniques attempts to provide a complete, dense representation of the flow field with high spatio-temporal coherency. An attempt of categorizing closely related solutions is incorporated and presented. Fundamentals are shortly addressed as well as advantages and disadvantages of the methods. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3 [Computer Graphics]: visualization, flow visualization, computational flow visualizatio

Visualization based on interactive clipping: application to confocal data

We have explored how clipping can be exploited in an interactive manner to visualize massive three-dimensional datasets. In essence, the proposed interactive clipping approach involves the dynamic adjustment of the clipping plane to expose any cross-section of the volume data and subsequent adjustment of the clipped surface to the best view position using a combination of rotation and translation. The thesis describes the design, implementation and application of our interactive-clipping-based visualization system. The implementation is done with OpenGL and C++, thus resulting in a highly portable and flexible system. For illustration, two types of scientific datasets, confocal data of a plant stem and calculated electronic charge density distributions are successfully visualized. The data are displayed using pixel- and texture-based rendering; the latter is shown to give a better performance