title: Precision isosurface rendering of 3D image data.
abstract: We address the task of rendering by ray tracing the isosurface of a high-quality continuous model of volumetric discrete and regular data. Based on first principles, we identify the quadratic B-spline as the best model for our purpose. The nonnegativity of this basis function allows us to confine the potential location of the isosurface within a binary shell. We then show how to use the space-embedding property of splines to further shrink this shell to essentially a single voxel width. Not all rays traced through a given shell voxel intersect the isosurface; many may only graze it, especially when the ray-tracing vantage point is close to or within the volume to be rendered. We propose an efficient heuristic to detect those cases. We present experiments to support our claims.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Imaging Group, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. philippe.thevenaz@epfl.ch
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Thévenaz
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Unser