A Fast Volume Rendering Algorithm for Virtual Endoscopy

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.