Fast maximum intensity projection with 3D nonlinear wavelets
Maguelonne Héritier, Rita Noumeir · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2006
Despite the increasing interest in three-dimensional (3D) visualization, rendering algorithms still suffer from high numerical complexity and large memory requirements. With the continuously increasing volume of medial imaging data, fast visualization algorithms become crucial. Powerful mathematical techniques based on the wavelet transform promise to provide efficient multi-resolution visualization algorithms, optimizing hence 3D rendering. Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP) is a 3D rendering algorithm that is used to visualize high-intensity structures within volumetric data. At each pixel the highest data value, which is encountered along a corresponding viewing ray, is depicted. In this paper, we propose a fast MIP 3D rendering that is based on a new hierarchical data representation. The proposed approach uses on a new morphological wavelet decomposition that allows for fast initial rendering and progressive subsequent refinements. Our method includes a pre-processing step that is based on a non-linear wavelet representation in order to achieve efficient data compression and storage. It results in a very fast visualization algorithm. The rendering speed-up results from removing cells that do not contribute to any MIP projection and from an innovative storage scheme of the volume cells. The proposed algorithm gives very promising results. Very good MIP projections can be obtained with less than 20% of the volumetric data. This makes our algorithm very competitive with the best MIP methods proposed so far in the literature.