Efficient Ambient and Emissive Tissue Illumination using Local Occlusion in Multiresolution Volume Rendering

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel technique to compute illumination for Direct Volume Rendering. By adding shadow effects to volume rendered images, the perception of shapes and tissue properties can be significantly improved and it has the potential to increase the diagnostic value of medical volume rendering. The integrated intensity of incident light for a voxel is computed using a local approximation of the ambient occlusion, thus avoiding the rendering of tissues with very low illumination. Luminous tissue effects are also introduced to enhance the illumination model, controlled through an emissive component in the transfer function. This effect allows the user to highlight specific structures and can give a better understanding of tissue density. Multiresolution volume management and GPU-based computation is used to significantly speed-up the calculations and to support large data sets. The scheme yields interactive frame rates for incrementally refined ambient and emissive illumination for arbitrary transfer function changes.