J WSCG
Optimizing GPU Volume Rendering
Volume Rendering methods employing the GPU capabilities offer high performance on off-the-shelf hardware. In this article, we discuss the various bottlenecks found in the graphics hardware when performing GPU-based Volume Rendering. The specific properties of each bottleneck and the trade-offs between them are described. Further we present a novel strategy to balance the load on the identified bottlenecks, without compromising the image quality. Our strategy introduces a two-staged space-skipping, whereby the first stage applies bricking on a semi-regular grid, and the second stage uses octrees to reach a finer granularity. Additionally we apply early ray termination to the bricks. We demonstrate how the two stages address the individual bottlenecks, and how they can be tuned for a specific hardware pipeline. The described method takes into account that the rendered volume may exceed the available texture memory. Our approach further allows fast run-time changes of the transfer function.
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BibTex
@article{bib:ruijters:2006,
author = { Ruijters, D. and Vilanova, Anna },
title = { Optimizing GPU Volume Rendering },
journal = { J WSCG },
volume = { 14 },
year = { 2006 },
pages = { 9--16 },
dblp = { journals/jwscg/RuijtersV06 },
url = { https://publications.graphics.tudelft.nl/papers/489 },
}