• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.87-97
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• 2018

Maximum intensity projection (MIP) is a common visualization technique in medical imaging system. A typical method to improve the performance of MIP is empty space leaping, which skips unnecessary area. This research proposes a new method to improve the existing empty space leaping. In order to skip more regions, we introduce a variety of acceleration strategies that use some tolerance given by the user to take part in image quality loss. Each proposed method shows various image quality and speed, and this study compares them to select the best one. Experimental results show that it is most efficient to add a constant tolerance function when the image quality required by the user is low. Conversely, when the user required image quality is high, a function with a low tolerance of volume center is most effective. Applying the proposed method to general MIP visualization can generate a relatively high quality image in a short time.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.30 no.3_4
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• pp.109-116
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• 2003

Space leaping is one of accelerated image-order volume rendering. This method accelerates rendering speed by finding and leaping the empty space. Although its rendering speed is very fast, it takes long pre-processing time to make the data structure to leap the space. In this paper we propose the look-ahead sampling algorithm to double the leaping distance comparing with previous approaches. This algorithm reduces the preprocessing time to make the distance map without significant changes of rendering time. Also, it accelerates the rendering time.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.9 no.8
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• pp.971-981
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• 2006

As shear-warp volume rendering is the fastest rendering method among the software based approaches, image quality is not good as that of other high-quality rendering methods. In this paper, we propose two methods to improve the image quality of shear-warp volume rendering without sacrificing computational efficiency. First, supersampling is performed in intermediate image space. We propose an efficient method to transform between volume and image coordinates at the arbitrary ratio. Second, we utilize pre-integrated rendering technique for shear-warp rendering. We propose new data structure called overlapped min-max map. Using this structure, empty space leaping can be performed so that we can maintain the rendering speed even though pre-integrated rendering is applied. Consequently, shear-warp rendering can generate high-qualify images comparable to those generated by the ray-casting without degrading speed.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.57-63
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• 2007

In real time rendering of fetus the empty space leaping while traversing a ray is most frequently used accelerating technique. The main idea is to skip empty voxel samples which do not contribute the result image and it speeds up the rendering time by avoiding sampling data while traversing a ray in the empty region, saving a substantial number of interpolations. Calculating the distance from the nearest object boundary for every yokel can reduce the sampling operation. Among widely-well-known distance maps, those estimates the true distance, such as euclidean distance, takes a long time to compute because of the complicated floating-point operations, and others which uses approximated distance functions, such as city-block and chessboard, provides faster computation time but sampling error may can occur. In this paper, therefore, we analyze the characteristics of several distance maps and compare the number of samples and rendering time. And we aim to suggest the most appropriate distance map for rendering of fetus in ultrasound image.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.210-216
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• 2009

Several empty-space leaping methods have been proposed for CPU-based volume ray casting. When sample points are located in semi-transparent cells, however, previous leaping methods perform unnecessary resamplings even if the scalar values on those points are confined within transparent range. A semi-transparent cells leaping method for volume ray casting using the Marching Cubes algorithm is proposed to solve this problem in our previous work. When a ray reaches a semi-transparent cell, our method performs in-out test between current sample point and the bounding box enclosing the triangles generated by the Marching Cubes. If the sample point lies on outside of the bounding box, we estimate the point is regarded as transparent. In this case, the ray advances to the next sample point without performing a resampling operation. We can frequently refer the tables for neighboring voxels, however, when we exploit conventional data structures of the Marching Cubes. We propose modified Marching Cubes tables for solving this problem.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.463-471
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• 2002

In order to implement virtual endoscopy, high-speed rendering algorithm that generates accurate perspective projection images and efficient collision detection method are essential. In this paper we propose an efficient virtual endoscopy system based on volume rendering technique. It is possible to skip over empty (transparent) space using the distance value produced in preprocessing time, and it does not deteriorate image quality since it is an extension of ray-casting. It also accelerates rendering speed with minimal loss of image quality by adjusting sampling interval along a ray according to direction of the ray. Using the distance information, we can simplify the collision detection of volumetric objects.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.6-13
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• 2006

Ultrasound visualization is a typical diagnosis method to examine organs, soft tissues and fetus data. It is difficult to visualize ultrasound data because the quality of the data might be degraded by artifact and speckle noise, and gathered with non-linear sampling. Rendering speed is too slow since we can not use additional data structures or procedures in rendering stage. In this paper, we use several visualization methods for fast rendering of ultrasound data. First method, denoted as adaptive ray sampling, is to reduce the number of samples by adjusting sampling interval in empty space. Secondly, we use early ray termination scheme with sufficiently wide sampling interval and low threshold value of opacity during color compositing. Lastly, we use bilinear interpolation instead of trilinear interpolation for sampling in transparent region. We conclude that our method reduces the rendering time without loss of image quality in comparison to the conventional methods.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.1-9
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• 2016

Linear interpolation is a basic sampling method for volume visualization. This method generates good images but sometimes it is inferior to our high expectation because it is encouraged to produce high quality images in the medical applications. In this paper, B spline based tri-cubic interpolation is used for the re-sampling step. The conventional B spline is an approximation method which does not cross control points so that we moved the control points and the curve crosses the original control points. In the rendering step, the empty space leaping is applicable to increase rendering speed. We have to calculate the maximum and minimum values for each block to detect empty space. The convex hull property of B spline enables the values of control points to be used as the maximum and minimum values. As a result, tri-cubic interpolated volume rendering is possible in interactive speed.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.339-347
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• 2011

As the volume visualization has been applied to render medical datasets, there has been a requirement to produce high quality images. Even though nice images can be generated by using previous linear filter, high order filter is required for better images. However, it takes much time for high order resampling, so that, overall rendering time is increased. In this paper, we perform high quality volume visualization using the cardinal interpolation. By enabling the empty space leaping which reduces the number of resampling, we achieve the efficient visualization. In detail, we divide the volume data into small blocks and leap empty blocks by referring the upper and lower bound value for each block. We propose a new method to estimate upper and lower bound value of for each block. As the result, we noticeably accelerated high quality volume visualization.