Volume Rendering: Going boldly where all have gone before…

August 12, 2009 | Computer Graphics | By: Mark VandeWettering

Image from CT data downloaded from http://graphics.stanford.edu/data/voldata/

Image from CT data downloaded from http://graphics.stanford.edu/data/voldata/

Okay, this is a bit gruesome, but I’ve been dusting off some old papers that I never really understood on Fourier Volume Rendering, and testing my understanding by writing some simple code that takes in a volume dataset and uses the fast Fourier transform to convert it into simulated X-ray pictures. The data set that this picture was generated from was downloaded from this webpage at Stanford, and consists of CT scan data of a cadaver. The basic code works! Given a bit more work, I should be able to do arbitrary orthographic views.

The math for all this is described quite admirably by Tom Malzbender’s paper Fourier Volume Rendering.

Addendum: Here is the raw data slices:


httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrwnuEtNUKc

Addendum2: Here is a link to some more interesting volume datasets.

Addendum3: Here’s my attempt at rotation. It doesn’t really work right yet. I think I understand why.


Comments

Comment from stefanbanev
Time 8/15/2009 at 2:25 pm

GPU fits perfectly well for this technique; you may get order of magnitude speedup comparatively with i7 920. Shading is non-trivial for FVR but possible. Arbitrary cut planes, arbitrary classification (especially multiple), fly-through etc…, such tool set essential to build even rudimentary VR WS is unknown for FVR; I have no doubts that this is possible but still nobody did it; you may be the first, good luck….

Regards,
Stefan