Speaker: Torsten Möller (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada)
Volume Rendering is a subfield of graphics that deals with the exploration, communication, and presentation of medical or scientific data. The presentation on a computer screen reduces the 3D nature of the data by one dimension. The 3D understanding of these data sets can be enhanced using so called motion parallax, i.e. the real-time interaction with the 2D display. Hence real-time rendering algorithms are crucial for the visualization of complex volumetric data.
In this talk I will survey typical volume rendering techniques and the current status of such algorithms. I will include the premise of high-quality visualization, since for many applications, especially medically based, reliability of the representation plays an important role. I will survey current software and hardware developments. Especially I will talk about several results for the improvement of splatting - one specific volume rendering method. I will argue for splatting to be one of the most promising volume rendering algorithms, since it can achieve high frame rates as well as high quality images. I hope that some conclusion I have to offer will stimulate some debate.