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Replaced by bruckner-2005-ICV.

Abstract

In volume rendering it is very difficult to simultaneously visualize interior and exterior structures while preserving clear shape cues. Very transparent transfer functions produce cluttered images with many overlapping structures, while clipping techniques completely remove possibly important context information. In this paper we present a new model for volume rendering, inspired by techniques from illustration that provides a means of interactively inspecting the interior of a volumetric data set in a feature-driven way which retains context information. The context-preserving volume rendering model uses a function of shading intensity, gradient magnitude, distance to the eye point, and previously accumulated opacity to selectively reduce the opacity in less important data regions. It is controlled by two user-specified parameters. This new method represents an alternative to conventional clipping techniques, shares their easy and intuitive user control, but does not suffer from the drawback of missing context information.

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BibTeX

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@techreport{TR-186-2-05-01,
  title =      "Illustrative Context-Preserving Volume Rendering",
  author =     "Stefan Bruckner and S{\"o}ren Grimm and Armin Kanitsar and
               Meister Eduard Gr{\"o}ller",
  year =       "2005",
  abstract =   "In volume rendering it is very difficult to simultaneously
               visualize interior and exterior structures while preserving
               clear shape cues. Very transparent transfer functions
               produce cluttered images with many overlapping structures,
               while clipping techniques completely remove possibly
               important context information. In this paper we present a
               new model for volume rendering, inspired by techniques from
               illustration that provides a means of interactively
               inspecting the interior of a volumetric data set in a
               feature-driven way which retains context information. The
               context-preserving volume rendering model uses a function of
               shading intensity, gradient magnitude, distance to the eye
               point, and previously accumulated opacity to selectively
               reduce the opacity in less important data regions. It is
               controlled by two user-specified parameters. This new method
               represents an alternative to conventional clipping
               techniques, shares their easy and intuitive user control,
               but does not suffer from the drawback of missing context
               information.",
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/186, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  institution = "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology",
  note =       "human contact: technical-report@cg.tuwien.ac.at",
  month =      jan,
  number =     "TR-186-2-05-01",
  keywords =   "focus+context techniques, non-photorealistic techniques,
               volume rendering",
  URL =        "http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2005/TR-186-2-05-01/",
}