Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research (대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지)

The Korean Society of Medical and Biological Engineering (대한의용생체공학회)
권호 표지

A Fast Volume Rendering Algorithm for Virtual Endoscopy

  • Ra Jong Beom (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KAIST) ;
  • Kim Sang Hun (Broadcast Technical Research Team, KBS) ;
  • Kwon Sung Min (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KAIST)
  • Published : 2005.02.01
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

3D virtual endoscopy has been used as an alternative non-invasive procedure for visualization of hollow organs. However, due to computational complexity, this is a time-consuming procedure. In this paper, we propose a fast volume rendering algorithm based on perspective ray casting for virtual endoscopy. As a pre-processing step, the algorithm divides a volume into hierarchical blocks and classifies them into opaque or transparent blocks. Then, in the first step, we perform ray casting only for sub-sampled pixels on the image plane, and determine their pixel values and depth information. In the next step, by reducing the sub-sampling factor by half, we repeat ray casting for newly added pixels, and their pixel values and depth information are determined. Here, the previously obtained depth information is utilized to reduce the processing time. This step is recursively performed until a full-size rendering image is acquired. Experiments conducted on a PC show that the proposed algorithm can reduce the rendering time by 70- 80% for bronchus and colon endoscopy, compared with the brute-force ray casting scheme. Using the proposed algorithm, interactive volume rendering becomes more realizable in a PC environment without any specific hardware.

Keywords

References

  1. Y. Lee, P.H. Lin, C.H. Lin, Y.N. Sun, and X.Z. Lin, 'Interactive 3-D Virtual Colonoscopy System' , IEEE Trans. Information Technology in Biomedicine, Vol. 3, No.2, pp. 139-150, 1999 https://doi.org/10.1109/4233.767089
  2. L. Hong, A. Kaufman, Y. Wei, A. Viswambharn, M. Wax, and Z. Liang, '3D Virtual Colonoscopy', Proc. IEEE Symp. Frontier in Biomedical Visualization, pp. 26-32, 1995
  3. L. Hong, S. Muraki, A. Kaufman, D. Bartz, and T. He, 'Virtual Voyage: Interactive Navigation in the Human Colon', Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH '97, pp. 27-34, 1997
  4. W.E. Loresen, and H. E. Cline, 'Marching Cubes: A High Resolution 3D Surface Construction Algorithm', Computer Graphics, Vol.21, No.4, pp. 163-169, 1987 https://doi.org/10.1145/37402.37422
  5. R. Hietala, and J. Oikarinen, 'A Visibility Determination Algorithm for Interactive Virtual Endoscopy', Proc. IEEE Visualization 2000, pp. 29-36, 2000
  6. S. You, L. Hong, M. Wan, K. Junyaprasert, A. Kaufman, S. Muraki, Y. Zhou, M. Wax, and Z. Liang, 'Interactive Volume Rendering for Virtual Colonoscopy', Proc. IEEE Visualization '97, pp. 433-436, 1997
  7. M. Levoy, Display of Surface from Volume Data, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, pp. 29-37, 1988
  8. K. Mueller, N. Shareef, J. Huang, and R. Crawfis, 'High-Quality Splatting on Rectilinear Grids with Efficient Culling of Occluded Voxels', IEEE Trans. Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 116-134, 1999 https://doi.org/10.1109/2945.773804
  9. J.K. Udupa, and D. Odhner, Shell Rendering, IEEE Computer Graphics and Aplplications, pp. 58-67, 1993
  10. P. Lacroute, and M. Levoy, 'Fast Volume Rendering Using a Shear-Warp Factorization of the Viewing Transformation', Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH '94, pp. 451-458, 1994
  11. M. Wan, Q. Tang, A. Kaufman, and Z. Liang, 'Volume Rendering Based Interactive Navigation within the Human Colon', Proc. IEEE Visualization '99, pp. 397-401, 1999
  12. M. Levay, 'Efficient Ray Tracing of Volume Data', ACM Trans. Graphics, Vol. 9, No.3, pp. 245-261, 1990 https://doi.org/10.1145/78964.78965
  13. M. Levoy, 'Volume Rendering by Adaptive Refinement', Visual Computer, Vol. 6, No.1, pp. 2-7, 1990 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01902624
  14. M. Wan, A. Sadiq, and A. Kaufman, 'Fast and Reliable Space Leaping for Interactive Volume Rendering', Proc. IEEE Visualization, pp. 195-202, 2002
  15. D. Silver, H. Sundar, and N. Gagvani, 'Shape Based Culling for Volume Graphics', Proc. 13th Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, Poster Session Presentation, 2002
  16. A. Vilanova, E. Groller, and A. Konig, 'Cylindrical Approximation of Tubular Organs for Virtual Endoscopy', Proc. Computer Graphics and Imaging, pp. 283-289, 2000
  17. R. Yagel, and Z. Shi, 'Accelerating Volume Animation by Space-Leaping', Proc. IEEE Visualization, pp. 62-69, 1993
  18. M.L. Brady, K.K. Jung, H.T. Nguyen, and T.P.Q. Nguyen, 'Interactive volume navigation', IEEE Trans. Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 4, No.3, 1998