Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Reaction: A survey of Algorithms for volume visualization

Volume visualization, as the paper suggests, is one of the most fast growing areas in the field of visualization. Many graphics techniques are used in volume visualization. This paper discusses the way in which these techniques are applied in fundamental volume visualization and the advantage and disadvantages of the algorithms used in those techniques.

In this paper different algorithms like SF, DVR, Ray Casting, Marching Cube etc algorithms have been discussed. Of all the algorithms I found ‘splatting’ which comes under DVR the most interesting one. Splatting performs a front to back object-order traversal of the voxels in the volumetric dataset. Each voxel’s contribution to the image is calculated and composited using a series of table lookups. It is called splatting because it is similar to throwing a snowball on a glass plate.

The section on photorealism is also very interesting. Here they have questioned if it is appropriate to visualize non plausible objects as people would find it difficult to relate to it. Well I agree to some extent but on the other hand I have never seen a visualization representing a physically non plausible object so I don’t really know how difficult an interpretation would be. Overall it was a nicely written paper with some interesting algorithms.

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