Introduction to Volume Rendering (Hewlett-Packard Professional Books) - Hardcover

Lichtenbelt, Barthold; Crane, Randy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0138616833 ISBN 13: 9780138616830

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1998

Synopsis

86168-2 The definitive, practical guide to rendering 3D discrete data! Volume rendering is the next revolution in computer graphics -- and this is your guide to the revolution. Start by understanding exactly what 3D volume rendering is, and how it differs from conventional computer graphics. Next, walk step-by-step through the volume rendering process -- including data acquisition, representation, storage, shading, classification, resampling and compositing. *Discover the most important applications for volume rendering *Learn the fundamentals, including transformation, classification, shading and composition *Manage key tradeoffs, including rendering performance, quality and precision *Discover great resources: periodicals, software, databases, Web sites and more *Hands-on techniques: easy-to-follow examples Once, volume rendering was limited to specialized medical applications --and it required supercomputer power. Today, it's everywhere: in science, engineering, even in computer games. For today's engineers, developers and students, this is must-know technology. You only need two things to get started: a C compiler and Introduction to Volume Rendering. CD-ROM included.Experiment to your heart's content! The accompanying CD-ROM includes comprehensive C source code, executable programs and data sets -- everything you need to learn volume rendering. Combined the authors have a broad base of volume rendering, imaging and computer graphics experience both within and outside of Hewlett-Packard Company. At Hewlett-Packard, they worked together to design the hardware and software medical imaging accelerators. Separately, they have designed MRI scanning software, optical scanning hardware, computer architectures and computer graphics systems. 0-13-861683-3

About this title

From the Back Cover

The definitive, practical guide to rendering 3D discrete data!

Volume rendering is the next revolution in computer graphics -- and this is your guide to the revolution. Start by understanding exactly what 3D volume rendering is, and how it differs from conventional computer graphics. Next, walk step-by-step through the volume rendering process -- including data acquisition, representation, storage, shading, classification, resampling and compositing.

• Discover the most important applications for volume rendering
• Learn the fundamentals, including transformation, classification, shading and composition
• Manage key tradeoffs, including rendering performance, quality and precision
• Discover great resources: periodicals, software, databases, Web sites and more
• Hands-on techniques: easy-to-follow examples

Once, volume rendering was limited to specialized medical applications --and it required supercomputer power. Today, it's everywhere: in science, engineering, even in computer games. For today's engineers, developers and students, this is must-know technology. You only need two things to get started: a C compiler and Introduction to Volume Rendering.

CD-ROM included. Experiment to your heart's content! The accompanying CD-ROM includes comprehensive C source code, executable programs and data sets -- everything you need to learn volume rendering.

Combined the authors have a broad base of volume rendering, imaging and computer graphics experience both within and outside of Hewlett-Packard Company. At Hewlett-Packard, they worked together to design the hardware and software medical imaging accelerators. Separately, they have designed MRI scanning software, optical scanning hardware, computer architectures and computer graphics systems.
0-13-861683-3

From the Inside Flap

Preface

The popularity of volume rendering has grown considerably these last few years. Due to the increase in desktop computing power, volume rendering has become more accessible to more people. For years, volume rendering applications were found almost solely in medical imaging. Now, volume rendering is used in diverse applications such as fluid dynamics, meteorology, failure analysis, and molecular modeling.
The list of applications grows everyday.
This book is for everyone who would like to explore volume rendering and its uses. Those professionals who regularly inspect three-dimensional sampled data will benefit greatly from the concepts presented in this book. This book will aid students of computer science and engineering who wish to know the best way to interactively view three-dimensional sampled data sets. Anyone interested in volume rendering concepts such as classification, lighting, ray casting, and compositing will find this book useful.

If you are interested in volume rendering, there are two compelling reasons to own this book. First, it is a comprehensive introduction to all the concepts you need to understand in order to volume render. Previously, the method of gathering all that information required a pile of IEEE transactions, a copy machine, and reams of paper. We have already done that and are anxious to pass the savings on to you. While reading all those transactions, we processed them for you. No obscure Greek letters are present, unless it is essential to the discussion. We culled the pertinent discussions while leaving the irrelevant information behind. We also augmented those discussions with our own experience. What we present to you is an organized, understandable, logical progression through the volume rendering pipeline.
Second, we strongly believe that a great part of the learning process requires hands-on experience. For this reason, a CD-ROM comes with the book. The CD-ROM includes source code, executable programs, and data sets to use. This gives you full control over your own volume renderer. You can perform unlimited "what if" experiments. If you wish to alter the order of the operations in the pipeline, or modify the gradient function, or maybe even add another light source, you can do it. With each successive experiment, you will get a better understanding of volume rendering.

Since this book cannot cover the esoteric aspects of volume rendering in great detail, we include a generous bibliography. Each chapter contains a section titled For Further Study which refers to the pertinent works in the reference section.

The first chapter of this book opens with an introduction to volume rendering. We explain exactly what volume rendering is and is not. Some volume rendering applications are presented next. Since new applications appear daily, we are only able to scratch the surface. You may wonder where to get 3-D data to manipulate. The next section in Chapter 1 covers volume acquisition, representation, and storage. An introduction of the volume rendering pipeline rounds out this chapter. This pipeline will be the basis of the presentations in the rest of the book.

The second chapter presents the framework for a basic volume renderer. As we go through the book, we will build upon this framework. This framework, as presented, will perform a simple maximum intensity projection. Chapter 2 also covers the concepts of three-dimensional transformation and projection. We follow the OpenGL model of viewing objects and extend this to volume data sets. This discussion will serve as the centerpiece of the basic volume rendering framework.

The next four chapters ("Illumination and Shading," "Classification," "Interpolation," and "Compositing") will take you step by step through the volume rendering pipeline. Each chapter presents a number of algorithms available for use in that particular block. As with any algorithm, these algorithms all have certain trade-offs that must be weighed when implementing your volume renderer.
Chapter 7 talks of volume slicing. It includes a discussion of multiplanar reformatting. Chapter 8 is dedicated to the trade-offs that must be addressed when implementing your volume renderer. The specific topics we address are rendering performance of a complete volume visualization system, quality, precision, and optimizations.

This book is both a course and a resource guide. The main section of the book presents the methods of volume rendering. The appendices provide helpful resources for anyone involved in volume rendering. These resources include related periodicals, volume data sets and source code, and volume visualization organizations and conferences. Also included is a list of other software products to analyze. We have also included the Voxelator volume rendering extensions to the OpenGL API. The Voxelator is an API (Application Program Interface) that sets a standard for a volume rendering pipeline as presented in detail in this book.

The information in this book comes from many different sources: books, articles, courses, and so on. It should prove to be a valuable reference manual. Prior to this publication, those who were interested in volume rendering relied on their filing system full of different volume rendering papers. We hope that this book will replace that filing system. Your best resource is the index at the back of this book.

The code on the CD-ROM is C and was developed in the Win32 environment of both Windows NT and Windows 95. We developed it using Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler. Much of the code is portable to other platforms.

In the past, interactive volume rendering was used exclusively by those with access to supercomputer capabilities. The dramatic improvements in CPU power have brought interactive volume rendering to the desktop. As more ingenious ways are invented to scan objects in three dimensions, volume rendering will be used in even more applications. We hope that this book removes some of the complexities of volume rendering and that with this new understanding, you will apply volume rendering to your own new application.

Barthold Lichtenbelt (barthold@verinet) Randy Crane Shaz Naqvi

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0138616833
• ISBN 13: 9780138616830
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 236