Frequency analysis of gradient estimators in volume rendering

Gradient information is used in volume rendering to classify and color samples along a ray. In this paper, we present an analysis of the theoretically ideal gradient estimator and compare it to some commonly used gradient estimators. A new method is presented to calculate the gradient at arbitrary sample positions, using the derivative of the interpolation filter as the basis for the new gradient filter. As an example, we will discuss the use of the derivative of the cubic spline. Comparisons with several other methods are demonstrated. Computational efficiency can be realized since parts of the interpolation computation can be leveraged in the gradient estimation     

高质量的三维纹理硬件体绘制

与光线投射法相比,传统的3D纹理体绘制算法通常难以产生高质量的图像。为了增强渲染图像的真实感与质量,在基于GPU（Graphics Processing Unit）的三维纹理体绘制过程中以交互的速率实现了体阴影效果,并考虑现实图像合成中的可视化感知,提出将基于GPU的高动态范围色调映射技术应用到体绘制得到的结果图片中。最后对一些体数据集进行绘制,实验表明这些技术较好地解决了传统纹理绘制方法的缺点,提高了图像的质量。     

Novel approach to development of direct volume rendering algorithms based on visualization quality assessment

A novel approach to the development of direct volume rendering algorithms is proposed. The approach is based on the assessment of the visualization quality. Analysis of rendering artifacts and various assessment methods is done using 3D reconstructed medical tomograms as test datasets. Analysis of the previous research on methods of 3D visualization quality assessment and quality improvement is presented. 3D visualization artifacts and quality measurement method (quantitative estimation) is proposed. The method does not require any ground truth image; hence, it is a universal approach to measure the quality of the 3D-reconstruction by any ray casting technique. The method is based on generation of the reference image as a mathematical expectation for a set of 3D visualizations obtained via the jittering technique. Start position of the rays are being shifted randomly towards their directions. To estimate the deviation of a pixel value from mathematical expectation, we use PSNR metrics, which is traditional metrics in signal and image processing and measures deviation in the decibel scale. The conditions of a proper use of the technique are discussed. A new virtual samplings method with preintegration is proposed to reduce sampling artifacts in the ray casting algorithm. The novelty of the method consists in using pre-integrated classification instead of post-classification in the virtual sampling method. A novel approach to 3D visualization algorithms development based on analysis of a ray casting method in quality-performance space is demonstrated by comparing the state-of-the-art ray casting methods and the proposed method. The comparative analysis revealed an advantage of the classical pre-integrated method in the case of using trilinear filtering without local shading. It also showed the advantage of the proposed virtual sampling method with pre-integration in the case of using tricubic filtering with local lighting.     

A practical approach to spectral volume rendering

To make a spectral representation of color practicable for volume rendering, a new low-dimensional subspace method is used to act as the carrier of spectral information. With that model, spectral light material interaction can be integrated into existing volume rendering methods at almost no penalty. In addition, slow rendering methods can profit from the new technique of postillumination-generating spectral images in real-time for arbitrary light spectra under a fixed viewpoint. Thus, the capability of spectral rendering to create distinct impressions of a scene under different lighting conditions is established as a method of real-time interaction. Although we use an achromatic opacity in our rendering, we show how spectral rendering permits different data set features to be emphasized or hidden as long as they have not been entirely obscured. The use of postillumination is an order of magnitude faster than changing the transfer function and repeating the projection step. To put the user in control of the spectral visualization, we devise a new widget, a "light-dial", for interactively changing the illumination and include a usability study of this new light space exploration tool. Applied to spectral transfer functions, different lights bring out or hide specific qualities of the data. In conjunction with postillumination, this provides a new means for preparing data for visualization and forms a new degree of freedom for guided exploration of volumetric data sets     

Development and validation of an instrument to measure user perceived service quality of mHealth

The role of service quality in fostering the growth of mHealth services has gained much attention in the academic and practitioner communities. However, empirical research in this area has been beset by inadequate conceptualization and the lack of a validated scale. This study addresses these limitations by theoretically conceptualizing and empirically validating a multidimensional service quality scale in the mHealth context. The findings show that mHealth service quality is a hierarchical, multidimensional, and reflective construct, which consists of three primary dimensions and eight subdimensions. The results also confirm that the mHealth service quality scale is more effective at predicting satisfaction and continuance in a nomological network.     

基于图形硬件加速的体绘制关键技术综述

随着近年来计算机图形硬件性能的不断提高,利用硬件来实现体绘制过程中的某些环节以获取交互的绘制速率变为可能,并逐渐成为目前的研究热点。从体绘制的分类、明暗处理、重构、体积裁剪等4个角度对基于图形硬件加速的体绘制方法进行了分类综述,介绍了各种关键技术的研究进展和典型算法,并讨论了各自特点及其相互联系。     

基于平行坐标的多个体绘制参数的优化调节*

提出基于平行坐标概念的参数控制平台来对体绘制中多个参数进行优化调节的方法。参数控制平台提供了一种调节和控制绘制参数的简单而有效的界面,它能把所有相关参数组织在一个空间,并且给用户同时显示所有参数配置的一个视图。用户可以在参数控制平台记录不同的历史绘制参数,并在一个空间对不同的参数进行比较,用户还可以重组不同的优化参数以生成新的绘制。参数控制平台有效地提高了用户对多个绘制参数进行优化调节的效率。     

Efficient generation of isosurfaces in volume rendering

An efficient method for extracting isosurfaces from volume data is proposed. The method utilizes a modified branch-on-need octree to bypass regions of no current interest. In addition, during the generation of triangle meshes neighboring triangles are merged according to certain criteria. Methods are also given to significantly reduce the space required for octrees. The method is more efficient and generates far fewer triangles than the marching cube algorithm. The performance of the proposed method is compared with that of several existing methods.     

光线跟踪方法在体绘制中的应用与发展

针对光线跟踪方法存在求交计算量大、实时交互性差等缺点.从体光线跟踪算法、基于图形硬件加速的光线跟踪体绘制方法,并行光线跟踪体绘制技术这3个方面,对国内外光线跟踪方法在体绘制中的应用技术进行了分类描述与综述,重点介绍了体光照模型、光线跟踪混合绘制、基于可编程硬件加速、并行绘制算法及体系结构,并结合应用阐述了各自特点及其相互联系,最后对光线跟踪方法在体绘制的应用提出了研究建议.     

Development and validation of an instrument to measure user perceived service quality of information presenting Web portals

Increasing numbers of organizations have set up material on their Web portals as a way of providing users with information about their products or services. This study developed and validated an instrument to measure user perceived service quality of such portals. Based upon conceptual models in the areas of IS and technology adoption, and using responses from 1992 users, we validated a five-dimension service quality instrument involving: usability, usefulness of content, adequacy of information, accessibility, and interaction. This scale provides a useful instrument for researchers who wish to measure the service quality of Web portals and for portal managers who want to improve their service performance.     

Uncertainty visualization in medical volume rendering using probabilistic animation

Direct Volume Rendering has proved to be an effective visualization method for medical data sets and has reached wide-spread clinical use. The diagnostic exploration, in essence, corresponds to a tissue classification task, which is often complex and time-consuming. Moreover, a major problem is the lack of information on the uncertainty of the classification, which can have dramatic consequences for the diagnosis. In this paper this problem is addressed by proposing animation methods to convey uncertainty in the rendering. The foundation is a probabilistic Transfer Function model which allows for direct user interaction with the classification. The rendering is animated by sampling the probability domain over time, which results in varying appearance for uncertain regions. A particularly promising application of this technique is a "sensitivity lens" applied to focus regions in the data set. The methods have been evaluated by radiologists in a study simulating the clinical task of stenosis assessment, in which the animation technique is shown to outperform traditional rendering in terms of assessment accuracy.     

Interactive exploration of tensor fields in geosciences using volume rendering

Volume rendering methods enable the user to explore interactively scalar data on regularly spaced three-dimensional grids. This article discusses how to use this method to explore and analyse three-dimensional tensor fields. The proposed visualization makes use of the programmability of modern graphics hardware and of “Line Integral Convolution”, a texture-based technique for the visualization of vector fields. While an example from geomechanics is used for presentation purposes, the rendering methods introduced are generic and would suit other application areas that involve volumetric data with several attributes equally well.     

Real-time ray casting rendering of volume clipping in medical visualization

This paper presents a real-time ray casting rendering algorithm for “volume clipping plane“ as an extension of the conventional ray casting technique.For each viewing direction a(moderate) pre-processing step is performed:the ray traverses the entire volume data (no early ray termination).Its intensity and opacity contributions are divided into several segments which are then sorted and stored by depth.At each sampling position along a segment,accumulated trans-parency and color are stored at a moderate memory overhead.For visualizing real-time volumeclipping,only relevant segment contributions (maximum two) at the location of the clipping plane are considered,thus reducing the calculation to meet real-time requirements.Compared with theprevious work that involves time-consuming re-clipping,re-traversing and re-shading,the proposed method achieves quality identical to ray casting at real-time speed.The performance is indepen-dent of the volume resolution and/or the number of clipping planes along a given viewing direction.Therefore it is suitable for real-time “internal volume inspections“,involving one or several cutting planes,typically applied e.g.,in medical visualization and material testing applications.     

Efficient visibility encoding for dynamic illumination in direct volume rendering

We present an algorithm that enables real-time dynamic shading in direct volume rendering using general lighting, including directional lights, point lights, and environment maps. Real-time performance is achieved by encoding local and global volumetric visibility using spherical harmonic (SH) basis functions stored in an efficient multiresolution grid over the extent of the volume. Our method enables high-frequency shadows in the spatial domain, but is limited to a low-frequency approximation of visibility and illumination in the angular domain. In a first pass, level of detail (LOD) selection in the grid is based on the current transfer function setting. This enables rapid online computation and SH projection of the local spherical distribution of visibility information. Using a piecewise integration of the SH coefficients over the local regions, the global visibility within the volume is then computed. By representing the light sources using their SH projections, the integral over lighting, visibility, and isotropic phase functions can be efficiently computed during rendering. The utility of our method is demonstrated in several examples showing the generality and interactive performance of the approach.     

About the influence of illumination models on image comprehension in direct volume rendering

In this paper, we present a user study in which we have investigated the influence of seven state-of-the-art volumetric illumination models on the spatial perception of volume rendered images. Within the study, we have compared gradient-based shading with half angle slicing, directional occlusion shading, multidirectional occlusion shading, shadow volume propagation, spherical harmonic lighting as well as dynamic ambient occlusion. To evaluate these models, users had to solve three tasks relying on correct depth as well as size perception. Our motivation for these three tasks was to find relations between the used illumination model, user accuracy and the elapsed time. In an additional task, users had to subjectively judge the output of the tested models. After first reviewing the models and their features, we will introduce the individual tasks and discuss their results. We discovered statistically significant differences in the testing performance of the techniques. Based on these findings, we have analyzed the models and extracted those features which are possibly relevant for the improved spatial comprehension in a relational task. We believe that a combination of these distinctive features could pave the way for a novel illumination model, which would be optimized based on our findings.     

Local histograms for design of transfer functions in direct volume rendering

Direct volume rendering (DVR) is of increasing diagnostic value in the analysis of data sets captured using the latest medical imaging modalities. The deployment of DVR in everyday clinical work, however, has so far been limited. One contributing factor is that current transfer function (TF) models can encode only a small fraction of the user's domain knowledge. In this paper, we use histograms of local neighborhoods to capture tissue characteristics. This allows domain knowledge on spatial relations in the data set to be integrated into the TF. As a first example, we introduce partial range histograms in an automatic tissue detection scheme and present its effectiveness in a clinical evaluation. We then use local histogram analysis to perform a classification where the tissue-type certainty is treated as a second TF dimension. The result is an enhanced rendering where tissues with overlapping intensity ranges can be discerned without requiring the user to explicitly define a complex, multidimensional TF     

Efficient opacity specification based on feature visibilities in direct volume rendering

Due to 3D occlusion, the specification of proper opacities in direct volume rendering is a time‐consuming and unintuitive process. The visibility histograms introduced by Correa and Ma reflect the effect of occlusion by measuring the influence of each sample in the histogram to the rendered image. However, the visibility is defined on individual samples, while volume exploration focuses on conveying the spatial relationships between features. Moreover, the high computational cost and large memory requirement limits its application in multi‐dimensional transfer function design. In this paper, we extend visibility histograms to feature visibility, which measures the contribution of each feature in the rendered image. Compared to visibility histograms, it has two distinctive advantages for opacity specification. First, the user can directly specify the visibilities for features and the opacities are automatically generated using an optimization algorithm. Second, its calculation requires only one rendering pass with no additional memory requirement. This feature visibility based opacity specification is fast and compatible with all types of transfer function design. Furthermore, we introduce a two‐step volume exploration scheme, in which an automatic optimization is first performed to provide a clear illustration of the spatial relationship and then the user adjusts the visibilities directly to achieve the desired feature enhancement. The effectiveness of this scheme is demonstrated by experimental results on several volumetric datasets.     

宏观交通量与GDP的复杂性测度及其相关分析

交通运输系统与社会经济系统的系统结构特征需要定量描述。为测度系统的结构特征之一复杂度,引入信息理论的改进的Lempel-Ziv算法——“通用试凑算法”。通过计算宏观交通量与GDP时间序列的复杂度,得到简单结论：GDP复杂度与货运交通量复杂度具有较强的正相关关系;GDP复杂度对宏观交通量复杂度的影响是长期的,具有滞后效应;GDP与宏观交通量现象的相关程度与二者复杂度的相关程度没有必然的联系。     

Theoretical analysis of an information-based quality measure for image fusion

While recently a few image fusion quality measures have been proposed, analytical studies of these measures have been lacking. Here, we focus on one popular mutual information-based quality measure and weighted averaging image fusion. Based on an image formation model, we obtain a closed-form expression for the quality measure and mathematically analyze its properties under different types of image distortion. Tests with real images are also presented which agree with the conclusions of the analytical results. The results show the quality measure studied does not generally properly characterize increases in the distortion (noise and blurring) of the images which are input into a weighted averaging fusion algorithm.