MC slicing for volume rendering applications

Abstract

Recent developments in volume visualization using standard graphics hardware provide an effective and interactive way to understand and interpret the data. Mainly based on 3D texture mapping, these hardware-accelerated visualization systems often use a cell-projection method based on a tetrahedral decomposition of volumes usually sampled as a regular lattice. On the contrary, the method we address in this paper considers the slicing problem as a restricted solution of the marching cubes algorithm [1, 2]. Our solution is thus simple, elegant and fast. The nature of the intersection polygons provides us with the opportunity to retain only 4 of the 15 canonical configurations defined by Lorensen and Cline and to propose a special look-up table. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.