Real-time incremental visualization of dynamic ultrasound volumes using parallel BSP trees
William F. Garrett, Henry Fuchs, Mary C. Whitton, Andrei State · 1996
We present a method for producing real-time volume visualizations of continuously captured, arbitrarily-oriented 2D arrays of data. Our system constructs a 3D representation "on-the-fly" from incoming 2D ultrasound slices. The slices are modeled as planar polygons with translucent surface textures to take advantage of highperformance polygon rendering on a Silicon Graphics RealityEngine2. Parallel, time-shifted BSP trees efficiently maintain the continuously captured geometry data and produce polygonal fragments in back-to-front order for transparent opacity-accumulation rendering. Although demonstrated only with ultrasound echography, we expect that this technique can be applied to any imaging modality in which real-time visualization is desired as the sensor collecting 2D data moves along an arbitrary path. 1 INTRODUCTION Ultrasound echography is a popular imaging modality for many medical applications including fetal examination, needle-guided breast biopsy, and cardiology. As the ...