Texture-based volume rendering of adaptive mesh refinement data

Many phenomena in nature and engineering happen simultaneously on rather diverse spatial and temporal scales. In other words, they exhibit a multi-scale character. A special numerical multilevel technique associated with a particular hierarchical data structure is adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). This scheme achieves locally very high spatial and temporal resolutions. Due to its popularity, many scientists are in need of interactive visualization tools for AMR data. In this article, we present a 3D texture-based volume-rendering algorithm for AMR data that directly utilizes the hierarchical structure. Thereby fast rendering performance is achieved even for high-resolution data sets. To avoid multiple rendering of regions that are covered by grids of different levels of resolution, we propose a space partitioning scheme to decompose the volume into axis-aligned regions of equal-sized cells. Furthermore the problems of interpolation artifacts, opacity corrections, and texture memory limitations are addressed. Published online: November 6, 2002 Correspondence to: R. K?hler     

GPU加速的八叉树体绘制算法

提出一种针对物体空间为序体绘制的空域跳过算法：采用双层次空间跳过,先以规则的数据分块作粗略地跳过,再以八叉树获得更高粒度的优化。该方法进一步解决了超过可用纹理内存容量的大规模体数据实时绘制问题,允许实时改变传递函数。针对该算法引入的CPU高负载瓶颈,提出一种新算法,在图形处理器(GPU)内快速计算采样面片,平衡了CPU与GPU间的运算负载。结合上述两种算法,实现高效的大规模体数据绘制并无损图像质量。     

A single-pass GPU ray casting framework for interactive out-of-core rendering of massive volumetric datasets

We present an adaptive out-of-core technique for rendering massive scalar volumes employing single-pass GPU ray casting. The method is based on the decomposition of a volumetric dataset into small cubical bricks, which are then organized into an octree structure maintained out-of-core. The octree contains the original data at the leaves, and a filtered representation of children at inner nodes. At runtime an adaptive loader, executing on the CPU, updates a view and transfer function-dependent working set of bricks maintained on GPU memory by asynchronously fetching data from the out-of-core octree representation. At each frame, a compact indexing structure, which spatially organizes the current working set into an octree hierarchy, is encoded in a small texture. This data structure is then exploited by an efficient stackless ray casting algorithm, which computes the volume rendering integral by visiting non-empty bricks in front-to-back order and adapting sampling density to brick resolution. Block visibility information is fed back to the loader to avoid refinement and data loading of occluded zones. The resulting method is able to interactively explore multi-gigavoxel datasets on a desktop PC.     

Interactive volume rendering of large sparse data sets using adaptive mesh refinement hierarchies

In this paper, we present an algorithm that accelerates 3D texture-based volume rendering of large, sparse data sets, i.e., data sets where only a traction of the voxels contain relevant information. In texture-based approaches, the rendering performance is affected by the fill-rate, the size of texture memory, and the texture I/O bandwidth. For sparse data, these limitations can be circumvented by restricting most of the rendering work to the relevant parts of the volume. In order to efficiently enclose the corresponding regions with axis-aligned boxes, we employ a hierarchical data structure, known as an AMR (adaptive mesh refinement) tree. The hierarchy is generated utilizing a clustering algorithm. A good balance is thereby achieved between the size of the enclosed volume, i.e., the amount to render in graphics hardware and the number of axis-aligned regions, i.e., the number of texture coordinates to compute in software. The waste of texture memory by the power-of-two restriction is minimized by a 3D packing algorithm which arranges texture bricks economically in memory. Compared to an octree approach, the rendering performance is significantly increased and less parameter tuning is necessary.     

Incremental Volume Rendering Using Hierarchical Compression

We present a new algorithm here for efficient incremental rendering of volumetric datasets. The primary goal of this algorithm is to give average workstations the ability to efficiently render volume data received over relatively low bandwidth network links in such a way that rapid user feedback is maintained. Common limitations of workstation rendering of volume data include: large memory overheads, the requirement of expensive rendering hardware, and high speed processing ability. The rendering algorithm presented here overcomes these problems by making use of the efficient Shear-Warp Factorisation method which does not require specialised graphics hardware. However the original Shear-Warp algorithm suffers from a high memory overhead and does not provide for incremental rendering which is required should rapid user feedback be maintained. Our algorithm represents the volumetric data using a hierarchical data structure which provides for the incremental classification and rendering of volume data. This exploits the multiscale nature of the octree data structure. The algorithm reduces the memory footprint of the original Shear-Warp Factorisation algorithm by a factor of more than two, while maintaining good rendering performance. These factors make our octree algorithm more suitable for implementation on average desktop workstations for the purposes of interactive exploration of volume models over a network. Results from tests using typical volume datasets will be presented which demonstrate the ability of the algorithm to achieve high rendering rates for both incremental rendering and standard rendering while reducing the runtime memory requirements.     

基于打包索引纹理的大规模数据体绘制算法

针对大规模数据体绘制效率低下的问题,提出一种算法：对体数据进行纹理分块打包,移除空数据块,并创建数据块的索引数据,绘制时通过索引访问打包后的纹理实现大规模数据完全载入显存,同时在索引中标记空数据及高密度数据块的位置,绘制前生成其有效的立方体数据表达,结合早期光线终止与空域跳过等加速技术,有效地实现了大规模的体数据的实时绘制,同时保证了结果图像的质量。     

基于自适应八叉树划分的高精度四面体可视化

利用八叉树结构将四面体数据转化为规则网格数据,能有效提高系统的交互性能.八叉树的划分层次越高,绘制效果越好,但数据的存储空间以及处理时间也将大幅增多.提出自适应的规则化表示方法来构建八叉树结构,改进原有的单一采样策略,并结合深度信息将采样结果转换成适用于GPU的八叉树纹理结构.然后采用光线投射算法来对体数据进行绘制,根据各区域深度不一的特点,提出了变步长的采样绘制策略.实验结果表明,本文方法降低了数据的空间存储量和处理时间,同时在绘制质量、绘制效率方面都得到了较大提高.     

Distributed shared memory for roaming large volumes

We present a cluster-based volume rendering system for roaming very large volumes. This system allows to move a gigabyte-sized probe inside a total volume of several tens or hundreds of gigabytes in real-time. While the size of the probe is limited by the total amount of texture memory on the cluster, the size of the total data set has no theoretical limit. The cluster is used as a distributed graphics processing unit that both aggregates graphics power and graphics memory. A hardware-accelerated volume renderer runs in parallel on the cluster nodes and the final image compositing is implemented using a pipelined sort-last rendering algorithm. Meanwhile, volume bricking and volume paging allow efficient data caching. On each rendering node, a distributed hierarchical cache system implements a global software-based distributed shared memory on the cluster. In case of a cache miss, this system first checks page residency on the other cluster nodes instead of directly accessing local disks. Using two Gigabit Ethernet network interfaces per node, we accelerate data fetching by a factor of 4 compared to directly accessing local disks. The system also implements asynchronous disk access and texture loading, which makes it possible to overlap data loading, volume slicing and rendering for optimal volume roaming.     

针对全空子数据体的GPU体绘制

目的 体绘制是3维数据可视化的主要方法之一。用于体绘制的数据体中包含有大量的空体素,导致光线投射算法进行没有意义的重采样计算,必然降低绘制算法效率。针对全空子数据体体绘制低效问题,提出基于GPU体高效绘制方法。方法 利用八叉树数据结构组织数据,有效管理包含许多空体素的子数据体。通过绘制八叉树非全空叶子节点子数据体表面,使光线投射算法中起始和终止重采样位置更接近数据体中的可视部分,同时根据八叉树全空节点子数据体判定纹理查询结果,计算合适的跳跃步长,快速跳过八叉树中全空节点子数据体。结果 当数据体中空体素较多时,确定合适的八叉树深度,有效地跳过数据体中的空体素,减少体绘制运算量,实现对原基于体包围盒表面绘制的GPU光线投射算法的加速。结论 设计不透明度函数,凸显数据体中层位面,并将算法成功应用于地震数据可视化,取得很好应用效果。     

NeTra: A toolbox for navigating large image databases

We present here an implementation of NeTra, a prototype image retrieval system that uses color, texture, shape and spatial location information in segmented image regions to search and retrieve similar regions from the database. A distinguishing aspect of this system is its incorporation of a robust automated image segmentation algorithm that allows object- or region-based search. Image segmentation significantly improves the quality of image retrieval when images contain multiple complex objects. Images are segmented into homogeneous regions at the time of ingest into the database, and image attributes that represent each of these regions are computed. In addition to image segmentation, other important components of the system include an efficient color representation, and indexing of color, texture, and shape features for fast search and retrieval. This representation allows the user to compose interesting queries such as “retrieve all images that contain regions that have the color of object A, texture of object B, shape of object C, and lie in the upper of the image”, where the individual objects could be regions belonging to different images. A Java-based web implementation of NeTra is available at http://vivaldi.ece.ucsb.edu/Netra.     

硬件加速的大数据量自适应体绘制

利用树形结构和纹理映射技术,在普通微机上实现对大数据量体数据的实时交互.依靠八叉树结构和显卡的硬件加速功能,将体数据划分为不同精度的数据块,打破了大数据显示时显存与内存间容量和带宽的限制,通过交互策略动态遍历该树,实现对大数据量体数据多精度的绘制.实验结果表明,文中方法在普通微机上可以大于10帧/s的速度交互操纵GB级以上的体数据.该方法可有效地降低体绘制对于硬件的需求,使得在较低配置下对其交互成为可能.     

基于最优化分块的大规模数据体绘制加速方法

GPU加速体绘制已成为体可视化领域的研究热点,然而超出显存的大规模数据无法直接载入,成为GPU应用的瓶颈。分块技术能够在保证图像质量的条件下解决该问题,但分块数据的频繁加载和访问明显降低了绘制速度。针对上述问题,通过建立最优化分块模型得到了大规模数据的最优分块,并通过构造节点编号纹理和改进距离模板设计的方法进一步提高了基于八叉树的分块体绘制算法的绘制速度。实验结果表明,该方法加速效果明显。     

体绘制技术在医学可视化中的新发展

科学计算可视化体绘制算法能反映出体数据的内部信息，在医学，它已经从辅诊断发展成为辅助治疗的重要手段，体可视化技术是医学可视化的重要研究内容，其处理过程包括体数据的获取，模型的建立，数据的映射，绘制等操作，该文介绍了医学可视化中常使用的几种光照模型，针对基于图象空间和对象空间两种体绘制算法，介绍了它们的基本思想方法，并详细阐述了在近期的主要加速技术和提高图象质量方法的新进展，最后给出了实验数据和结论。     

加速透视投影体绘制技术研究

针对可视化中透视体绘制计算量大、耗时较长的不利因素,算法将三维体数据集按照三种主要的观察方向(X,Y,Z)抽取出切片数据,对切片数据进行错切操作,设立一个与切片平行的中间图像平面;在绘制中间图像时使用图形硬件所提供的纹理混和功能;最终图像经过中间图像的变形而得到,从而使绘制速度得到了较大提高。     

Query by video clip

Typical digital video search is based on queries involving a single shot. We generalize this problem by allowing queries that involve a video clip (say, a 10-s video segment). We propose two schemes: (i) retrieval based on key frames follows the traditional approach of identifying shots, computing key frames from a video, and then extracting image features around the key frames. For each key frame in the query, a similarity value (using color, texture, and motion) is obtained with respect to the key frames in the database video. Consecutive key frames in the database video that are highly similar to the query key frames are then used to generate the set of retrieved video clips. (ii) In retrieval using sub-sampled frames, we uniformly sub-sample the query clip as well as the database video. Retrieval is based on matching color and texture features of the sub-sampled frames. Initial experiments on two video databases (basketball video with approximately 16,000 frames and a CNN news video with approximately 20,000 frames) show promising results. Additional experiments using segments from one basketball video as query and a different basketball video as the database show the effectiveness of feature representation and matching schemes.     

Edge-preserving texture filtering for real-time rendering

Texture filtering is essential in enhancing the visual quality of real-time rendering. Conventional schemes do not consider the characteristics of texture content, thus the sharpness of edges in texture images cannot be retained. This paper proposes a novel texture-filtering algorithm, which consists of edge-preserving interpolation and edge-preserving MIP-map prefiltering. The memory bandwidth requirement is kept the same as in conventional schemes by dynamically adjusting the interpolation kernel. Hardware implementation is also provided to show the real-time processing capability. Published online: 28 January 2003     

大规模点云内外存调度绘制技术

为实现大规模点云的快速绘制,提出以部分内存访问机制为基础、以节点点数上限为叶节点形成条件的平衡八叉树存储结构。设计点云内外存调度绘制流程,包括节点可见性判断、内外存数据调度和点云绘制等环节。为提高可见性判断的效率,在视点与节点距离、夹角约束条件的基础上给出节点可视半径约束。利用实测大规模点云数据进行实验,结果证明,该技术可以在有限的内存资源条件下,以较小的内存消耗实现上亿级规模点云从整体到局部的流畅绘制。     

大型网格模型多分辨率的外存构建与交互绘制

结合多分辨率、网格排布和基于视点的绘制技术,提出一种外存多分辨率构建和绘制算法.采用适应性八叉树对模型的包围盒进行划分,自顶向下构建模型的多分辨率层次结构,较好地保持了原模型的细节分布;并对多分辨率结构中每个节点所包含的三角形片段进行网格排布优化,降低了缓存的平均失效率;在实时绘制时,采用基于视点的细节层次选择策略进行模型的细化;最后通过引入数据预取机制来隐藏磁盘I/O延时,进一步提高绘制性能.实验结果表明,该算法在绘制速度与细节保留上均优于同类MRMM算法.     

基于标准PC机的大数据实时体绘制算法研究究

为了解决在标准PC机上对大数据进行实时体绘制的问题，提出了一种基于图形处理器的大数据高质量体绘制算法。该算法采用三维纹理映射作为核心的绘制算法，结合可见性测试、遮挡测试和模板测试来加快绘制速度。实验结果表明，对虚拟人体数据，可以在不损失图像质量的前提下，以可交互的速度进行绘制。     

一种基于数据差分的频域体绘制算法

针对频域体绘制的图像质量问题,提出一种基于数据差分的且能动态提升图像质量的频域体绘制算法。用数据场差分替代原数据场,计算三维数据场的动态调节因子,通过模拟补偿图像的深度感和真实感,动态地调节图像质量。设计了采样点合并等加速技术绘制图像。实验结果表明该算法能提升图像质量,加快了绘制速度。