Hierarchical splatting: a progressive refinement algorithm for volume rendering

  • Authors:
  • David Laur;Pat Hanrahan

  • Affiliations:
  • Princeton University, Princeton, NJ;Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 18th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques
  • Year:
  • 1991

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper presents a progressive refinement algorithm for volume rendering which uses a pyramidal volume representation. Besides storing average values, the pyramid stores estimated error, so an octtree can be fit to the pyramid given a user-supplied precision. This octtree is then drawn using a set of splats, or footprints, each scaled to match the size of the projection of a cell. The splats themselves are approximated with RGBA Gouraud-shaded polygons, so that they can be drawn efficiently on modern graphics workstations. The result is a real-time rendering algorithm suitable for interactive applications.