With the addition of the compute shader stage for GPGPU hardware it has becomepossible to run CPU like programs on modern GPU hardware. The greatest benefit can be seen for algorithms that are of highly parallel nature and in the case of volume rendering the Marching cubes algorithm makes for a great candidate due to its simplicity and parallel nature. For this thesis the Marching cubes algorithm was implemented on a compute shader and used in a DirectX 12 framework to determine if GPU frametime performance can be improved by executing the compute command queue parallell to the graphics command queue. Results from performance benchmarks show that a gain is present for each benchmarked configuration and the largest gains are seen for smaller workloads with up to 52%. This information could therefore prove useful for game developers who want to improve framerates or decrease development time but also in other fields such as volume rendering for medical images.

<p>Ultrasound (US) volume data is noisy, so traditional methods for direct volume rendering (DVR) are less appropriate. Improved methods or new techniques are required. There are furthermore a high performance requirement and limited pre-processing to be considered in order for it to be used interactively, since the volume data might be time-varying.</p><p>There exist numerous techniques for improving visual perception of volume rendering, and while some perform well and produce a visually enhanced result, many are designed and compared for use with medical data that has a high signal-to-noise ratio. This master thesis describe and compare recent methods for DVR illumination, in the form of ambient occlusion or direct/indirect lighting from an external light source. New designs and modifications are introduced for efficiently and effectively enhancing the visual quality of DVR with US data. Furthermore, this thesis addresses the issue of how clipping is performed during rendering and for the different illumination techniques, which is commonly used in ultrasound visualization.</p><p>This diploma work was conducted at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, NJ where the partially open source framework XIP is developed. The framework was extended further to include modern methods for DVR illumination that are described in detail within this thesis. Finally, presented results show that several methods can be used to visually enhance the visualization within highly interactive frame-rates.</p>

<p>As the volumes are entering the world of computer graphics the pure volume visualisation becomes a more important tool in for example research and medical applications. But the advance in haptics --- force feedback from the computer --- is behind. In volume haptics no equal to the proxy method so popular in surface haptics has yet emerged. Some implementations of volume haptics even use surfaces as intermediate representations so that surface haptics can be used.</p><p>The intention of this work was to create natural feeling haptic feedback from volumetric density data using pure volume haptics. The haptic algorithm would be implemented in Reachin API for the Reachin Desktop Display, together with other parts to build up a usable volume visualisation environment.</p><p>To achieve the feeling of stiffness and friction dependent on tissue type, a proxy based method was developed. In the volume the proxy is constrained by virtual surfaces defined by the local gradient. This algorithm was implemented in a volume haptics node and for visualisation a volume renderer node was implemented. These nodes can be used to setup different volume visualisation environments using VRML.</p>

The effectiveness of direct volume rendered images depends on finding transfer functions which emphasize structures in the underlying data. In order to support this process, we present a spreadsheet-like constructive visual component-based interface, which also allows novice users to efficiently find meaningful transfer functions. The interface uses a programming-by-example style approach and exploits the domain knowledge of the user without requiring visualization knowledge. Therefore, our application automatically analysis histograms with the Douglas-Peucker algorithm in order to identify potential structures in the data set. Sample visualizations of the resulting structures are presented to the user who can refine and combine them to more complex visualizations. Preliminary tests confirm that the interface is easy to use, and enables non-expert users to identify structures which they could not reveal with traditional transfer function editors. / <p>Short paper</p>

There is a growing need for custom visualization applications to deal with the rising amounts of volume data to be analyzed in fields like medicine, seismology, and meteorology. Visual programming techniques have been used in visualization and other fields to analyze and visualize data in an intuitive manner. However, this additional step of abstraction often results in a performance penalty during the actual rendering. In order to prevent this impact, a careful modularization of the required processing steps is necessary, which provides flexibility and good performance at the same time. In this paper, we will describe the technical foundations as well as the possible applications of such a modularization for GPU-based volume raycasting, which can be considered the state-of-the-art technique for interactive volume rendering. Based on the proposed modularization on a functional level, we will show how to integrate GPU-based volume ray-casting in a visual programming environment in such a way that a high degree of flexibility is achieved without any performance impact.

Ultrasound (US) volume data is noisy, so traditional methods for direct volume rendering (DVR) are less appropriate. Improved methods or new techniques are required. There are furthermore a high performance requirement and limited pre-processing to be considered in order for it to be used interactively, since the volume data might be time-varying. There exist numerous techniques for improving visual perception of volume rendering, and while some perform well and produce a visually enhanced result, many are designed and compared for use with medical data that has a high signal-to-noise ratio. This master thesis describe and compare recent methods for DVR illumination, in the form of ambient occlusion or direct/indirect lighting from an external light source. New designs and modifications are introduced for efficiently and effectively enhancing the visual quality of DVR with US data. Furthermore, this thesis addresses the issue of how clipping is performed during rendering and for the different illumination techniques, which is commonly used in ultrasound visualization. This diploma work was conducted at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, NJ where the partially open source framework XIP is developed. The framework was extended further to include modern methods for DVR illumination that are described in detail within this thesis. Finally, presented results show that several methods can be used to visually enhance the visualization within highly interactive frame-rates.

The rapid proliferation of 3D volume data, including MRI and CT scans, is prompting the search within computer graphics for more effective volume visualisation techniques. Partially because of the traditional association with medical subjects, concepts borrowed from the domain of scientific illustration show great promise for enriching volume visualisation. This thesis describes the first general system dedicated to creating user-directed, variable-detail, scientific illustrations directly from volume data. In particular, using volume segmentation for explicit abstraction in non-photorealistic volume renderings is a new concept. The unique challenges and opportunities of volume data require rethinking many non-photorealistic algorithms that traditionally operate on polygonal meshes. The resulting 2D images are qualitatively different from but complementary to those normally seen in computer graphics, and inspire an analysis of the various artistic implications of volume models for scientific illustration.

Volume rendering is a research area within scientific visualisation, where images are computed from volumetric data sets for visual exploration. Such data sets are typically generated by Computer aided Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Positron Emission Tomography or gained from simulations. The data sets are usually interpreted using optical models that assign optical properties to the volume and define the illumination and shading behaviour. Volume rendering techniques may be divided into three classes: object-order, image-order or hybrid methods. Image-order or ray casting methods shoot rays from the view plane into the volume and simulate the variation of light intensities along those rays. Object-order techniques traverse the volume data set and project each volume element onto the view plane. Hybrid volume rendering techniques combine these two approaches. A very popular object-order rendering method is called splatting. This technique traverses the volume data set and projects the optical properties of each volume element onto the view plane. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part introduces two new splatting methods, collectively called high-resolution splatting, which are based on standard splatting. Both high-resolution splatting methods correct errors of splatting by applying major modifications. We propose the first method, called fast high-resolution splatting, as an alternative to standard splatting. It may be used for quick previewing, since it is faster than standard splatting and the resulting images are significantly sharper. Our second method, called complete high-resolution splatting, improves the volume reconstruction, which results in images that are very close to those produced by ray casting methods. The second part of the thesis incorporates wavelet analysis into high-resolution splatting. Wavelet analysis is a mathematical theory that decomposes volumes into multi-resolution hierarchies, which may be used to find coherence within volumes. The combination of wavelets with the high-resolution splatting method has the two advantages. Firstly the extended splatting method, called high-resolution wavelet splatting, can be directly applied to wavelet transformed volume data sets without performing an inverse transform. Secondly when visualising wavelet compressed volumes, only a small fraction of the wavelet coefficients need to be projected. For all three versions of the new high-resolution splatting method, complexity analyses, comprehensive error and performance analyses as well as implementation details are discussed.

Volume rendering is a research area within scientific visualisation, where images are computed from volumetric data sets for visual exploration. Such data sets are typically generated by Computer aided Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Positron Emission Tomography or gained from simulations. The data sets are usually interpreted using optical models that assign optical properties to the volume and define the illumination and shading behaviour. Volume rendering techniques may be divided into three classes: object-order, image-order or hybrid methods. Image-order or ray casting methods shoot rays from the view plane into the volume and simulate the variation of light intensities along those rays. Object-order techniques traverse the volume data set and project each volume element onto the view plane. Hybrid volume rendering techniques combine these two approaches. A very popular object-order rendering method is called splatting. This technique traverses the volume data set and projects the optical properties of each volume element onto the view plane. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part introduces two new splatting methods, collectively called high-resolution splatting, which are based on standard splatting. Both high-resolution splatting methods correct errors of splatting by applying major modifications. We propose the first method, called fast high-resolution splatting, as an alternative to standard splatting. It may be used for quick previewing, since it is faster than standard splatting and the resulting images are significantly sharper. Our second method, called complete high-resolution splatting, improves the volume reconstruction, which results in images that are very close to those produced by ray casting methods. The second part of the thesis incorporates wavelet analysis into high-resolution splatting. Wavelet analysis is a mathematical theory that decomposes volumes into multi-resolution hierarchies, which may be used to find coherence within volumes. The combination of wavelets with the high-resolution splatting method has the two advantages. Firstly the extended splatting method, called high-resolution wavelet splatting, can be directly applied to wavelet transformed volume data sets without performing an inverse transform. Secondly when visualising wavelet compressed volumes, only a small fraction of the wavelet coefficients need to be projected. For all three versions of the new high-resolution splatting method, complexity analyses, comprehensive error and performance analyses as well as implementation details are discussed.

Volume rendering is a research area within scientific visualisation, where images are computed from volumetric data sets for visual exploration. Such data sets are typically generated by Computer aided Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Positron Emission Tomography or gained from simulations. The data sets are usually interpreted using optical models that assign optical properties to the volume and define the illumination and shading behaviour. Volume rendering techniques may be divided into three classes: object-order, image-order or hybrid methods. Image-order or ray casting methods shoot rays from the view plane into the volume and simulate the variation of light intensities along those rays. Object-order techniques traverse the volume data set and project each volume element onto the view plane. Hybrid volume rendering techniques combine these two approaches. A very popular object-order rendering method is called splatting. This technique traverses the volume data set and projects the optical properties of each volume element onto the view plane. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part introduces two new splatting methods, collectively called high-resolution splatting, which are based on standard splatting. Both high-resolution splatting methods correct errors of splatting by applying major modifications. We propose the first method, called fast high-resolution splatting, as an alternative to standard splatting. It may be used for quick previewing, since it is faster than standard splatting and the resulting images are significantly sharper. Our second method, called complete high-resolution splatting, improves the volume reconstruction, which results in images that are very close to those produced by ray casting methods. The second part of the thesis incorporates wavelet analysis into high-resolution splatting. Wavelet analysis is a mathematical theory that decomposes volumes into multi-resolution hierarchies, which may be used to find coherence within volumes. The combination of wavelets with the high-resolution splatting method has the two advantages. Firstly the extended splatting method, called high-resolution wavelet splatting, can be directly applied to wavelet transformed volume data sets without performing an inverse transform. Secondly when visualising wavelet compressed volumes, only a small fraction of the wavelet coefficients need to be projected. For all three versions of the new high-resolution splatting method, complexity analyses, comprehensive error and performance analyses as well as implementation details are discussed.