High Dynamic Range Volume Visualization
Xiaoru Yuan, M.Z. Nguyen, B. Chen, David H. Porter · 2006
HDR rendering Tone mapping Raw data HDR image (pseudo color encoded) Tone mapped image Figure 1: Pipeline of high dynamic range volume visualization. The input is a scalar volume with high precision and/or high resolution (e.g. 20483). The user defines a transfer function using a novel non-linear magnification interface. The volume rendering output is in high dynamic range image format. By applying a tone mapping operator, the final result can be displayed on a regular low dynamic range display device. High resolution volumes require high precision compositing to pre-serve detailed structures. This is even more desirable for volumes with high dynamic range values. After the high precision interme-diate image has been computed, simply rounding up pixel values to regular display scales loses the computed details. In this paper, we present a novel high dynamic range volume visualization method for rendering volume data with both high spatial and intensity res-olutions. Our method performs high precision volume rendering followed by dynamic tone mapping to preserve details on regular