Rendering volumetric data using STICKS representation scheme

Abstract

An increasing need to efficiently represent and render 3D volumetric data is being experienced in many application fields ranging from scientific and medical visualization to CAD. A technique of representing this kind of data, the Sticks representation scheme, is proposed here with the aim of allowing an efficient representation and rendering of voxel data on low-capability workstations. This data model is based on a 3D extension of the well-known run-length encoding methods. It requires O(kn 2 ) memory cells to represent O(n 3 ) volumetric data and produces a degree of data compression greater than that of the Octree model. Rendering a frontal orthographic projection of a Sticks-represented volume is a very simple task and requires only a partial scan of the data. A Ray Tracing algorithm is presented for the synthesis of gradient-shaded parallel projections; the proposed algorithm exploits the data compression to drastically reduce the complexity of rendering.