View dependent isosurface extraction

Abstract

We propose a new approach to polygonal isosurface extraction that is based on extracting only the visible portion of the isosurface. The visibility tests are done in two phases. First, coarse visibility tests are performed in software to determine the visible cells. These tests are based on hierarchical tiles and shear-warp factorization. The second phase resolves the visible portions of the extracted triangles and is accomplished by the graphics hardware.While the latest isosurface extraction methods have effectively eliminated the search phase bottleneck, the cost of constructing and rendering the isosurface remains high. Many of today's large datasets contain very large and complex isosurfaces that can easily overwhelm even state-of-the-art graphics hardware. The proposed approach is output sensitive and is thus well suited for remote visualization applications where the extraction and rendering phases are done on a separate machines.

Coherent multiresolution isosurface ray tracing

“…Wilhelms and Van Gelder [3] proposed a min/max octree hierarchy that allowed the extraction process to only consider cells containing the surface. Livnat & Hansen [4] improved this concept with a view-dependent frustum culling technique. Westermann et al [5] further extended it to adaptive extraction of multiresolution (though not compressed) octree volume data.…”

Biomedical Visualization

“…We improved further on these isosurface extraction methods by using a different visibility testing approach and virtual buffer rendering to achieve a real-time, view-dependent isosurface extraction [30][31][32][33]. We also presented a progressive hardware assisted isosurface extraction (PHASE) that is suitable for remote visualization i.e., when the data and display device reside on separate computers.…”

“…We also presented a progressive hardware assisted isosurface extraction (PHASE) that is suitable for remote visualization i.e., when the data and display device reside on separate computers. This approach works by reusing, when a view point is changed, the information and triangles that were extracted from the previous view point [32]. Using this approach, we can extract only newly visible sections of the isosurface and thus improve visualization performance.…”

Interactive Exploration of Remote Isosurfaces with Point-Based Non-Photorealistic Rendering

“…This is because the number of triangles computed from the marching cubes algorithm [14] is often quite large. To reduce the size of the geometry, researchers have proposed various approaches such as surface decimation [20] and view-dependent methods [13,18]. In general, surface decimation is mostly performed at a post-processing step and thus is not suitable for dynamic isosurface exploration.…”