• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 2011

Recently, various researches have been proposed to accelerate GPU-based volume ray-casting. However, those researches may cause several problems such as bottleneck of data transmission between CPU and GPU, requirement of additional video memory for hierarchical structure and increase of processing time whenever opacity transfer function changes. In this paper, we propose an efficient GPU-based empty space skipping technique to solve these problems. We store maximum density in a brick of volume dataset on a vertex element. Then we delete vertices regarded as transparent one by opacity transfer function in geometry shader. Remaining vertices are used to generate bounding boxes of non-transparent area that helps the ray to traverse efficiently. Although these vertices are independent on viewing condition they need to be reproduced when opacity transfer function changes. Our technique provides fast generation of opaque vertices for interactive processing since the generation stage of the opaque vertices is running in GPU pipeline. The rendering results of our algorithm are identical to the that of general GPU ray-casting, but the performance can be up to more than 10 times faster.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.19-27
• /
• 2013

This paper presents a real-time GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) isosurface ray-caster that improves the performance by 4-7 folds from our previous method, while keeping the superior visual quality. Such an improvement is achieved by incorporating an efficient empty-space skipping scheme and an analytic normal computation. The empty-space skipping scheme is done by building an min/max octree computed from the BB(Bernslein-B$\acute{e}$zier)-form of spline pieces and the analytic normal Formula provides not only a nice visual quality but also an improved evaluation performance.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.9 no.9
• /
• pp.1160-1172
• /
• 2006

Unfolding is an efficient technique to detect colorectal disease since it represents entire shape of colon at a glance. However, the previous unfolding methods may miss the surface located behind the folds or high curvature areas. To solve the problem, we propose an adaptive unfolding method that controls the number of rays in accordance with the surface complexity. In the first step, we find sample points of longer and shorter distance between the sample points and the colon surface, and then determine them as based control points. Next, for reaching rays of sample points in the wrinkled colon surface, sample points are shifted toward the control points that have the long distance. Lastly, we perform a 2D scaling which solves local distortions of the unfolding surface and avoids missing surface. Consequently, our method could be visualized the hidden surface of colon organ in detail.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.34-38
• /
• 2005

본 논문에서는 대형 스크린 기반 디스플레이 환경에서 시각 커뮤니케이션 증진을 위한 비디오 아바타 생성 기법에 대하여 소개한다. 일반적으로 대형 스크린 기반 가상 환경에서는 스크린으로 투사되는 빛의 변화 때문에 정적 배경을 보장할 수 없다. 뿐만 아니라 카메라 위치 설정이 자유롭지 못하기 때문에 디스플레이 환경 내에 있는 사용자를 대상으로 비디오 아바타를 생성하기 쉽지 않다. 본 논문에서는 적외선 및 필터를 이용하여 가시광선을 차단함으로써 사용자 영역을 쉽게 정의할 수 있도록 하였고, 나란히 배치된 컬러 영상에 실루엣 마스크를 적합하여 배경이 제거된 사용자 컬러 영상을 추출할 수 있도록 하였다. 또한 생성된 스테레오 비디오 아바타 영상은 투영 텍스처를 이용하여 보정된 후 가상세계에 투사되어 입체 디스플레이 된다. 제안된 기법은 일반적인 카메라를 이용하고 있으며, 간단한 조명 조건만 설정해주면 기존의 대형 스크린 기반 프로젝션 환경을 변형하지 않고도 쉽게 설치하여 사용할 수 있기 때문에 많은 활용도가 있을 것이라 기대된다.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.17-25
• /
• 2020

We present a novel multi-core CPU based parallel algorithm for the cell-connectivity information extraction algorithm, which is one of the preprocessing steps for volume rendering of unstructured grid data. We first check the synchronization issues when parallelizing the prior serial algorithm naively. Then, we propose a 3-step parallel algorithm that achieves high parallelization efficiency by removing synchronization in each step. Also, our 3-step algorithm improves the cache utilization efficiency by increasing the spatial locality for the duplicated triangle test process, which is the core operation of building cell-connectivity information. We further improve the efficiency of our parallel algorithm by employing a memory pool for each thread. To check the benefit of our approach, we implemented our method on a system consisting of two octa-core CPUs and measured the performance. As a result, our method shows continuous performance improvement as we add threads. Also, it achieves up to 82.9 times higher performance compared with the prior serial algorithm when we use thirty-two threads (sixteen physical cores). These results demonstrate the high parallelization efficiency and high cache utilization efficiency of our method. Also, it validates the suitability of our algorithm for large-scale unstructured data.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.14 no.10
• /
• pp.1229-1237
• /
• 2011

The volume ray-casting method is one of the direct volume rendering methods that produces high-quality images as well as manipulates semi-transparent object. Although the volume ray-casting method produces high-quality image by sampling in the region of interest, its rendering speed is slow since the color acquisition process is complicated for repetitive memory reference and accumulation of sample values. Recently, the GPU-based acceleration techniques are introduced. However, they require pre-processing or additional memory. In this paper, we propose efficient point-primitive based method to overcome complicated computation of GPU ray-casting. It presents semi-transparent objects, however it does not require preprocessing and additional memory. Our method is fast since it generates point-primitives from volume dataset during sampling process and it projects the primitives onto the image plane. Also, our method can easily cope with OTF change because we can add or delete point-primitive in real-time.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.14 no.8
• /
• pp.981-991
• /
• 2011

MIP(Maximum Intensity Projection) is a volume rendering technique which is essential for the medical imaging system. MIP rendering based on the ray casting method produces high quality images but takes a long time. Our aim is improvement of the rendering speed using GPGPU(General-purpose computing on Graphic Process Unit) technique. In this paper, we present the ray casting algorithm based on CUDA(an acronym for Compute Unified Device Architecture) which is a programming language for GPGPU and we suggest new acceleration methods for CUDA. In detail, we propose the block based space leaping which skips unnecessary regions of volume data for CUDA, the bisection method which is a fast method to find a block edge, and the initial value estimation method which improves the probability of space leaping. Due to the proposed methods, we noticeably improve the rendering speed without image quality degradation.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
• /
• v.37 no.4
• /
• pp.11-21
• /
• 2000

This paper proposes a new algorithm for a mobile robot that detects and tracks a moving target, keeping it in the view range of the robot. The sensor system consists of a camera and a line light source. The camera system is placed so that the line light projected into the ground from the light source forms its image along the horizontal center line of the CCD array of the camera. The deformation of the line image from the horizontal center line contains the information on existence of a moving object, its velocity, and position. Since the proposed algorithm reduces the region of the image to be searched, it reduces the computational complexity significantly comparing to the conventional image processing algorithms. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested by implementing on a mobile robot.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
• /
• v.6 no.5
• /
• pp.457-467
• /
• 2000

본 논문에서는 분산 메모리 구조를 갖는 병렬 컴퓨터 상에서 방대한 크기를 갖는 볼륨 데이터의 효과적인 가시화를 위한 병렬 광선 투사법을 제안한다. 데이터의 압축을 기반으로 하는 본 기법은 다른 프로세서의 메모리로부터 데이터를 읽기보다는 자신의 지역 메모리에 존재하는 압축된 데이터를 빠르게 복원함으로써 병렬 렌더링 성능을 향상시키는 것을 목표로 한다. 본 기법은 객체-순서와 영상-순서 탐색 알고리즘 모두의 정점을 이용하여 성능을 향상시켰다. 즉, 블록 단위의 최대-최소 팔진트리의 탐색과 각 픽셀의 불투명도 값을 동적으로 유지하는 실시간 사진트리를 응용함으로써 객체-공간과 영상-공간 각각의 응집성을 이용하였다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 압축 기반 병렬 볼륨 렌더링 방법은 렌더링 수행 중 발생하는 프로세서간의 통신을 최소화하도록 구현되었는데, 이러한 특징은 프로세서 사이의 상당히 높은 데이터 통신 비용을 감수하여야 하는 PC 및 워크스테이션의 클러스터와 같은 더욱 실용적인 분산 환경에서 매우 유용하다. 본 논문에서는 Cray T3E 병렬 컴퓨터 상에서 Visible Man 데이터를 이용하여 실험을 수행하였다.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.302-308
• /
• 2010

A gradient method can provide a global optimal path in indoor environments. However, the optimal path can be often generated in narrow areas despite a sufficient wide area which lead to safe navigation. This paper presents a novel approach to path planning for safe navigation of a mobile robot. The proposed algorithm extracts empty regions using a ray-casting method and then generates temporary waypoints in wider regions in order to reach the goal fast and safely. The experimental results show that the proposed method can generate paths in the wide regions in most cases and the robot can reach the goal safely at high speeds.