1. Survey of Parallel Volume Rendering Algorithmsby
Craig M. Wittenbrink
Visual Computing Department
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
presentation by
Nicholas Schwarz
Electronic Visualization Lab
University of Illinois at Chicago

2. Introduction
Visualizing large volume data is computationally complex – O(n^3) for an n x n x n volume.
Use parallelism to achieve interactivity.
Current classifications make it difficult to determine the best approach.
Presents a 5 class taxonomy for parallel volume rendering algorithms.

3. Volume Rendering Taxonomy
Algorithm Control Flow
View Reconstruction
Backward – Ray Casting
Forward – Splatting
Multipass Forward
Fourier
Outer Loop Data Space
Object Space
Image Space

4. Volume Rendering Taxonomy
Targeted Hardware
Graphics (G)
Volume Rendering (VR)
Parallel Shared Address Space (PS)
Parallel Distributed Address Space (PD)
Distributed (D)

5. Volume Rendering Taxonomy
Application Data Characteristics
Input Topologies
Rectilinear (R)
Curvilinear (C)
Unstructured (U)
Data Types
Scalar, Vector, Tensor
Data Units
Voxel Format

6. Volume Rendering Taxonomy
Visualization Method
Shading, Data Classification, Transmission Model, Reconstruction Filter, Gradient
Publication Specifics
Date, Number of Processors, Volume Size, Prototype Machine, Asymptotic Complexity Analysis, and Performance

7. Survey

8. Links