A Data Distributed Parallel Algorithm for Ray-Traced Volume Rendering

Abstract

This paper presents a divide-and-conquer ray-traced volume rendering algorithm and a parallel image compositing method, along with their implementation and performance on the Connection Machine CM-5, and networked workstations. This algorithm distributes both the data and the computations to individual processing units to achieve fast, high-quality rendering of high- resolution data. The volume data, once distributed, is left intact. The processing nodes perform local raytracing of their subvolume concurrently. No communication between processing units is needed during this locally ray-tracing process. A subimage is generated by each processing unit and the final image is obtained by compositing subimages in the proper order, which can be determined a priori. Test results on both the CM-5 and a group of networked workstations demonstrate the practicality of our rendering algorithm and compositing method.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA270501

Entities

People

  • Charles D. Hansen
  • James S. Painter
  • Kwan-liu Ma
  • Michael F. Krogh

Organizations

  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Application Software
  • Compression
  • Computations
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Data Sets
  • Dynamic Loads
  • High Resolution
  • Local Area Networks
  • Network Computing
  • Parallel Computing
  • Parallel Processing
  • Ray Tracing
  • Trees (Data Structures)
  • Universities

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Vision.
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development