Fast Hardware-Accelerated Volume Rendering of CT Scans
Ronghua Liang, Zhigeng Pan, Mel Krokos, Mao Chen, Jiarui Bao, Cheng Jung Li · Journal of Display Technology · 2008
As CT scanning is a very common medical imaging method, we propose new hardware-based algorithms using GPU (Graphical Processor Unit) programming for rapid visualization. Firstly, 3D volumes are constructed from CT scans. Then volume rendering is used to display anatomical structures via algorithms founded on improved ray casting and 2D textures. Our methods achieve interactive rendering rates and require an ordinary PC with an off-the-shelf graphics card. We expect our approach to be useful to medical practitioners for handling modern, large-scale medical datasets.