Global illumination of white matter fibers from DT-MRI data

We describe our recent work in applying physically-based global illumination to fiber tractography. The geometry of the fiber tracts is derived from diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) datasets acquired from the white matter in the human brain. Most visualization systems display such fiber tracts using local illumination, a rendering technology provided by the video card on a typical desktop computer. There is indirect evidence that the human visual system perceives the shape of a fiber more quickly and more accurately when physically-based illumination is employed.