Interactive View-Dependent Rendering of Large Isosurfaces

Benjamin Gregorski
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and University of California, Davis

Mark Duchaineau, Peter Lindstrom, Valerio Pascucci
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Kenneth I. Joy
University of California, Davis

Proceedings of IEEE Visualization 2002, October 2002, pp. 475-482.

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Abstract

We present an algorithm for interactively extracting and rendering isosurfaces of large volume datasets in a view-dependent fashion. A recursive tetrahedral mesh refinement scheme, based on longest edge bisection, is used to hierarchically decompose the data into a multiresolution structure. This data structure allows fast extraction of arbitrary isosurfaces to within user specified view-dependent error bounds. A data layout scheme based on hierarchical space filling curves provides access to the data in a cache coherent manner that follows the data access pattern indicated by the mesh refinement.