Result: Mastering Interactive Surface Rendering for Java-Based Diagnostic Applications

The display of iso-surfaces in medical data sets is an important visualization technique used by radiologists for the diagnosis of volumetric density data sets. The demands put by radiologists on such a display technique are interactivity, multiple stacked transparent surfaces and cutting planes that allow an interactive clipping of the surfaces. This paper presents a Java based, platform independent implementation of a very fast surface rendering algorithm which combines the advantages of explicit surface representation, splatting, and shear-warp projection to fulfill all these requirements. The algorithm is implemented within the context of J-Vision, an application for viewing and diagnosing medical images which is currently in use at various hospitals. CR Categories: I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture / Image generation---display algorithms; J.3 [Life and Medical Sciences]: Medical information systems Keywords: volume visualization, surface rendering, medical applications. tomogra.