TY - JOUR
T1 - Interactive obstruction-free lensing for volumetric data visualization
AU - Traore, Michael
AU - Hurter, Christophe
AU - Telea, Alexandru
PY - 2019/1
Y1 - 2019/1
N2 - Occlusion is an issue in volumetric visualization as it prevents direct visualization of the region of interest. While many techniques such as transfer functions, volume segmentation or view distortion have been developed to address this, there is still room for improvement to better support the understanding of objects' vicinity. However, most existing Focus+Context fail to solve partial occlusion in datasets where the target and the occluder are very similar density-wise. For these reasons, we investigate a new technique which maintains the general structure of the investigated volumetric dataset while addressing occlusion issues. With our technique, the user interactively defines an area of interest where an occluded region or object is partially visible. Then our lens starts pushing at its border occluding objects, thus revealing hidden volumetric data. Next, the lens is modified with an extended field of view (fish-eye deformation) to better see the vicinity of the selected region. Finally, the user can freely explore the surroundings of the area under investigation within the lens. To provide real-time exploration, we implemented our lens using a GPU accelerated ray-casting framework to handle ray deformations, local lighting, and local viewpoint manipulation. We illustrate our technique with five application scenarios in baggage inspection, 3D fluid flow visualization, chest radiology, air traffic planning, and DTI fiber exploration.
AB - Occlusion is an issue in volumetric visualization as it prevents direct visualization of the region of interest. While many techniques such as transfer functions, volume segmentation or view distortion have been developed to address this, there is still room for improvement to better support the understanding of objects' vicinity. However, most existing Focus+Context fail to solve partial occlusion in datasets where the target and the occluder are very similar density-wise. For these reasons, we investigate a new technique which maintains the general structure of the investigated volumetric dataset while addressing occlusion issues. With our technique, the user interactively defines an area of interest where an occluded region or object is partially visible. Then our lens starts pushing at its border occluding objects, thus revealing hidden volumetric data. Next, the lens is modified with an extended field of view (fish-eye deformation) to better see the vicinity of the selected region. Finally, the user can freely explore the surroundings of the area under investigation within the lens. To provide real-time exploration, we implemented our lens using a GPU accelerated ray-casting framework to handle ray deformations, local lighting, and local viewpoint manipulation. We illustrate our technique with five application scenarios in baggage inspection, 3D fluid flow visualization, chest radiology, air traffic planning, and DTI fiber exploration.
KW - Interaction techniques
KW - focus plus context
KW - volume visualization
KW - volume rendering
KW - raycasting
KW - ATTRIBUTE
KW - VIEWS
U2 - 10.1109/TVCG.2018.2864690
DO - 10.1109/TVCG.2018.2864690
M3 - Article
SN - 1077-2626
VL - 25
SP - 1029
EP - 1039
JO - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
IS - 1
ER -