Interactive 3D Medical Visualization: A Parallel Approach to Surface Rendering 3D Medical Data
Terry S. Yoo, David T. Chen · 1994
INTRODUCTION Using Pixel-Planes 5, a parallel multicomputer for computer graphics [Fuchs 90], we have constructed a system for visualizing volumetric medical data based on polygonal approaches to surface rendering. The goal is a medical visualization system that has intuitive navigation and exploration capabilities to present 3D clinical data using three dimensional images. To provide a natural navigation of patient data, segmentation parameters should provide user feedback at minimum rates of one update per second, and viewing direction and lighting control should respond in tenths of seconds. Our approach differs from other methods under investigation at UNC [Yoo 92] as we take advantage of the hardware graphics accelerators for polygon rendering rather than attempt direct volume rendering. II. BACKGROUND Fuchs and his colleagues developed an approach for generating surface models from 3D slice-based medical data. Their method uses extracted contours of anatom