Occlusion-Resolving Direct Volume Rendering

MPhil Thesis Defence


Title: "Occlusion-Resolving Direct Volume Rendering"

By

Mr. Wai-Ho Mak


Abstract

Direct volume rendering (DVR) is a powerful visualization technique which 
allows users to effectively explore and study volumetric datasets. 
Different transparency settings can be flexibly assigned to different 
structures such that some valuable information can be revealed in direct 
volume rendered images (DVRIs). However, some important parts of the 
interesting structures can be missing in the DVRIs due to occlusion 
problems. We propose two techniques to address these problems in this 
thesis. First, we present VoxelBars as an informative interface for volume 
visualization. VoxelBars arrange voxels into a 2D space and visually 
encode multiple attributes of voxels into one display. With VoxelBars, 
users can easily find out clusters of interesting voxels and set 
properties of a specific group of voxels. Various sophisticated 
visualization tasks dealing with occlusion problems can be achieved. 
Second, we investigate how to semi-automatically generate a set of 
visibility-aware DVRIs and also an animation which can reveal information 
missed in the original DVRIs and meanwhile satisfy some image quality 
criteria such as context and coherence. A complete framework is developed 
to tackle various problems related to generation and quality evaluation of 
visibility-aware DVRIs and animations.


Date:			Friday, 29 May 2009

Time:			2:00pm – 4:00pm

Venue:			Room 1504
 			Lifts 25-26

Committee Members:	Dr. Huamin Qu (Supervisor)
 			Dr. Albert Chung (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Chi-Keung Tang


**** ALL are Welcome ****