Volume-Enclosing Surface Extraction

In this paper we present a new method, which allows for the construction of triangular isosurfaces from three-dimensional data sets, such as 3D image data and/or numerical simulation data that are based on regularly shaped, cubic lattices. This novel volume-enclosing surface extraction technique, which has been named VESTA, can produce up to six different results due to the nature of the discretized 3D space under consideration. VESTA is neither template-based nor it is necessarily required to operate on 2x2x2 voxel cell neighborhoods only. The surface tiles are determined with a very fast and robust construction technique while potential ambiguities are detected and resolved. Here, we provide an in-depth comparison between VESTA and various versions of the well-known and very popular Marching Cubes algorithm for the very first time. In an application section, we demonstrate the extraction of VESTA isosurfaces for various data sets ranging from computer tomographic scan data to simulation data of relativistic hydrodynamic fireball expansions.Comment: 24 pages, 33 figures, 4 tables, final versio

GPU Programming - Speeding Up the 3D Surface Generator VESTA

The novel "Volume-Enclosing Surface exTraction Algorithm" (VESTA) generates triangular isosurfaces from computed tomography volumetric images and/or three-dimensional (3D) simulation data. Here, we present various benchmarks for GPU-based code implementations of both VESTA and the current state-of-the-art Marching Cubes Algorithm (MCA). One major result of this study is that VESTA runs significantly faster than the MCA.Comment: 1 page, 1 figure, submitted contribution to the GSI Scientific Report 201

Bose-Einstein Correlations and the Equation of State of Nuclear Matter in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

Experimental spectra of the CERN/SPS experiments NA44 and NA49 are fitted while using four different equations of state of nuclear matter within a relativistic hydrodynamic framework. For the freeze-out temperatures, $T_f = 139$ MeV and $T_f = 116$ MeV, respectively, the corresponding freeze-out hypersurfaces and Bose-Einstein correlation functions for identical pion pairs are discussed. It is concluded, that the Bose-Einstein interferometry measures the relationship between the temperature and the energy density in the equation of state of nuclear matter at the late hadronic stage of the fireball expansion. It is necessary, to use the detailed detector acceptances in the calculations for the Bose-Einstein correlations.Comment: 8 pages, including 4 figures. You can also download a PostScript file of the manuscript from http://p2hp2.lanl.gov/people/schlei/eprint.htm