Direct Volumetric Rendering Based on Point Primitives in OpenGL
André Luiz Miranda da Rosa, Ilana de Almeida Souza, Adilson Yuuji Hira, Marcelo Knörich Zuffo
EPUSP - Escola Politécnica da USP – Engenharia Elétrica – LSI (Laboratório de Sistemas Integráveis)
São Paulo/SP, Brasil; {amiranda, iasouza, ayhira, mkzuffo}@lsi.usp.br
To make diagnosis, doctors many times analyze images
slices acquired from, for example, Computed
Tomography, and try to mentally reconstruct the resultant
tri-dimensional scene. The acquired information strongly
depends on the experience and training of the medical
specialist and its knowledge of the current studied object
[Meinzer et al 1991]. Therefore, there’s a necessity to
offer a mechanism that facilitates the three-dimensional
visualization of medical examinations, so volumetric
renderization appeared as a method to project
multidimensional data set in a bi-dimensional
visualization plan to gain better knowledge of the
structure contained in the volumetric data.
Nowadays, there are many graphical boards in the market
that perform the volumetric data renderization by means
of their hardware. As they’re special hardware to
accelerate the volumetric renderization, they offer better
speed than software based renderization algorithms, but
they have the disadvantage to have a higher cost.
Therefore, the use of the software based renderization
system described here is more appropriate for many
situations where we don’t want to acquire more expensive
component and only want to use components that come
with personal computers as accelerating boards that
support the OpenGL libraries, becoming very useful for
the majority of the population.
The aim of this paper is to describe a volumetric data
renderization method based on point primitives that is
simpler than other existing algorithm and that offers a
good performance without the use of special graphical
boards. The volumetric data can be acquired, for example,
from archives in TIFF, JPEG, BMP, GIF or DICOM
(Digital Imaging Communication in Medicine - a standard
wide used for medical examinations images as Computed
Tomography) formats. Particularly, we chose the
segmented visible human data set [Souza 2004] because it
is commonly used by the scientific community.
Our intention is to integrate this visualization technique to
the Collaborative Environment for Second Medical
Opinion developed by the Telemedicine Group in the
LSI/EPUSP that allows the remote collaboration between
users through the Internet using Chat, Videoconference
and Bi-dimensional Collaborative Blackboard to allow
images diagnosis at distance.
This algorithm was implemented using JAVA language
and graphical library LWJGL (Lightweight Java Game
Library). The considered algorithm creates a model in
OpenGL, through primitive of points, where each voxel
becomes a point with the color calculated by the R, G and
B values related to this pixel position in the corresponding
images. Therefore, it is possible to visualize a cloud of
points placed one to the side of the others, through a
distance that allows each voxel to assume the size of one
pixel in the users screen (Figure 1). An interaction model
with mouse and keyboard was also created, allowing to
the user to translate, rotate and scale the model in any
direction.
Figure 1: Visible Human Volumetric Renderization
As this direct visualization algorithm only plot the pixels
in 3D, transforming them into voxels, it becomes
extremely simple. However, he does not offer a good
renderization speed (in the case of processing all voxels,
without eliminating hidden voxels), with 15
frames/second for low-resolution images (183 x 148
pixels and 150 slices) and 3 frames/second for average
resolution (438 x 354 pixels and 150 slices), depending on
the processor and the video board used.
Currently, we are optimizing this algorithm so that hidden
voxels would not be processed and it would provide faster
renderization and will allow its use in real time
applications. It is also being added a pixel size control
(used to represent each voxel) in relation to the user point
of view (so that volume zoom can occur) preventing the
undesirable effect of empty spaces originated by the
approach of the volume to the user point of view.
References
Meinzer , H., Meetz, K., Scheppelmann, D., Engelmann, U.,
Baur, H. J. (1991) "The Heidelberg Ray Tracing Model",
German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg. IEEE Computer
Graphics & Applications.
Souza, I.A., Sanches-Jr, C., Binatto, M.B., Lopes, T.T., Zuffo,
M.K. (2004). Direct Volume Rendering of the Visible Human
Dataset on a Distributed Multiprojection Immersive
Environment, Anais do VII Symposium on Virtual Reality
(SVR’04), São Paulo, SP, October, 183-194.