External memory techniques for isosurface extraction in scientific visualization
Yi‐Jen Chiang, Cláudio Silva · DIMACS series in discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science · 1999
. Isosurface extraction is one of the most effective and powerful techniques for the investigation of volume datasets in scientific visualization. Previous isosurface techniques are all main-memory algorithms, often not applicable to large scientific visualization applications. In this paper we survey our recent work that gives the first external memory techniques for isosurface extraction. The first technique, I/O-filter, uses the existing I/O-optimal interval tree as the indexing data structure (where the corner structure is not implemented), together with the isosurface engine of Vtk (one of the currently best visualization packages). The second technique improves the first version of I/O-filter by replacing the I/O interval tree with the metablock tree (whose corner structure is not implemented). The third method further improves the first two, by using a two-level indexing scheme, together with a new meta-cell technique and a new I/O-optimal indexing data structure (the binary-bl...