A multilayered image cache for scientific visualization

Abstract

We introduce a multi-layered image cache system that is designed to work with a pool of rendering engines to facilitate a frame-less, asynchronous rendering environment for scientific visualization. Our system decouples the rendering from the display of imagery at many levels; it decouples render frequency and resolution from display frequency and resolution; allows asynchronous transmission of imagery instead of the compute-send cycle of standard parallel systems; and allows local, incremental refinement of imagery without requiring all imagery to be re-rendered.Interactivity is accomplished by maintaining a set of image tiles for display while the production of imagery is performed by a pool of processors. The image tiles are placed in fixed places in camera (vs. world) space to eliminate occlusion artifacts. Display quality is improved by increasing the number of image tiles and imagery is refreshed more frequently by decreasing the number of image tiles.

Space-time volumetric depth images for in-situ visualization

“…In volume rendering, layer-based representations have been used to defer operations such as lighting and classification [17,16]. Layer-based representations have also been proven effective to cache results [10,8] or certain volumetric properties along the view rays [12], which can be reused for efficient transfer function exploration. Tikhonova et al [20] convert a small number of volume renderings to a multi-layered image representation, enabling interactive exploration in transfer function space.…”

A Collaborative Digital Pathology System for Multi‐Touch Mobile and Desktop Computing Platforms

“…This imbalance has given rise to a third class of systems uses a shared rendering approach (the server renders an intermediary format and sends this to the client for final compositing). Shared rendering systems typically utilize graphics hardware acceleration on the client to ensure interactive performance [BSL*00], [EEHT00], [LP03]. While commercial and open source systems [IBM05], [Vis], [HRC*06], [Par] implementing these different paradigms are readily available, the size and complexity of these systems is a barrier to entry for new users and pathologists.…”

An Exploratory Technique for Coherent Visualization of Time‐varying Volume Data

“…Visibility histograms [CM09] compute visibility distribution of all image samples to guide the generation of good transfer functions. Other approaches use view‐dependent images to cache results [LP03] or composite new views of volume rendered data [RPSH08, WQ07]. Ma et al propose to cache samples along a ray for repeated use in the transfer function exploration process [MCP91].…”