High-quality multi-resolution volume rendering in medicine

In order to perform a high-quality interactive rendering of large medical data sets on a single off-the-shelf PC, a LOD selection algorithm for multi-resolution volume rendering using 3D texture mapping is presented, which uses an adaptive scheme that renders the volume in a region-of-interest at a high resolution and the volume away from this region at lower resolutions. The algorithm is based on several important criteria, and rendering is done adaptively by selecting high-resolution cells close to a center of attention and low-resolution cells away from this area. In addition, our hierarchical level-of-detail representation guarantees consistent interpolation between different resolution levels. Experiments have been applied to a number of large medical data and have produced high quality images at interactive frame rates using standard PC hardware.