• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.8 no.9
• /
• pp.1239-1247
• /
• 2005

Basically, objects are discriminated by transfer functions in volume rendering . However, in some cases objects cannot be discriminated only with transfer functions. In these cases, objects are pre-segmented with other methods, and visualized based on the segmentation information. In this paper we present a way of assigning per-object transparency in visualization of segmented volumes. Semi-transparent rendering is used to effectively give context information about the observed object. Per-object transparency can be used as a very effective visualization tool especially when it is difficult to adjust transfer functions to make the object semi-transparent. We present several interpretations of the meaning of per-object transparency, and corresponding variations of the algorithm. We show that efficient implementations for interactive use are possible, by presenting an implementation using general graphics hardware.