6/21/2005 VG 2005

Volume Graphics: What's in the cards...

Michael Meissner (Viatronix)

6/21/2005 VG 2005

Volume Graphics: What's in the cards...

Michael Meissner (Viatronix)

6/21/2005 VG 2005

9 (10?) key questions from 1999

What’s in the cards?

In which cards???

Well, it really depends on the perspective

In the following: medical applications

6/21/2005 VG 2005

Medical Applications

Where do physicians use VG?

Diagnostic tool (Unable to automatically tell what’s wrong, 3D is ordered in < 5% of all cases because it is time consuming and difficult)

Treatment planning tool (what to do?).

Verification tool (automatic detection)

Interdisciplinary communication tool

6/21/2005 VG 2005

Medical Applications

Observations: Scientists: explorative visualization

(understand problem and find solution)

End-users: 1, 2, or 3 clicks to get to the goal (simplicity!!!) (make solution available, robust, reproducible)

Strong NEED for automation, consisting of: Segmentation Detection Guidance Visualization (1D, 2D, 3D, 4D?) only fraction of the problem Etc.

Where is this (VG) research and what of it is engineering?

6/21/2005 VG 2005

9 (10?) key questions from 1999

On the initial questions:

Volumes vs. surfaces? Rectilinear, curved, irregular, etc.

Definition of reflection, refraction, etc.? (amorphous)

Concepts to unify modelling & rendering API Voxel-based radiosity? Feasible? Advantages? Force & touch with volume data? (Deformation?)

Volume based digitisation? Frequency domain representations fast enough? Availability of real-time volume rendering? Impact of VG onto other fields?

6/21/2005 VG 2005

9 (10?) key questions from 1999

Availability of real-time volume rendering?

CPU, GPU, and dedicated hardware able to deal with 2563 voxels (up to 5123?)

This will continue to improve but: CPUs already slow down GPUs will slow down, too

Parallel rendering: unavoidable!!! Multiple CPU cores Intel, AMD, IBM (Cell)

Will it be SIMD or MIMD? In the future, where is difference of CPU/GPU?

Feasability

6/21/2005 VG 2005

9 (10?) key questions from 1999

Availability of real-time volume rendering?

APIs limited: High-level: Volumizer, TGS Inventor Low-level: OpenGL, DirectX

Related libraries limited: Vtk, Itk, ?

6/21/2005 VG 2005

9 (10?) key questions from 1999

What would it take to make it verifiable?

Reference: Datasets but also what to look for!!! (app domain) Transfer functions View ports Renderings Etc.

Framework to build on top/plug into needed!!!(but where should it come from? Who should be gate keeper?)

Research community might not capable of this?

6/21/2005 VG 2005

9 (10?) key questions from 1999

Impact of VG onto other fields?

Who is impacting who? Apps <> VG

Is VG is (becoming) application specific

VG has become integral part in medicine but only for a fraction of cases because there are simple alternative solutions.

A (classical) volume rendered image is not necessarily most meaningful. Simplicity!!!

6/21/2005 VG 2005

Impact of VG: radiology

Asking radiologists about the most

important innovations of the last decade:

MIP Thin slab … … 3D

Primary reason: too many slices to review

6/21/2005 VG 2005

Future

What is in the cards: Larger data: 16 bit 10243 datasets (64 bit OS)

Multi-resolution volume rendering Memory management Parallelism

Multi-modality scans: Fusion Registration

Non Photo-realistic rendering!!! Segmentation User interfaces

6/21/2005 VG 2005

If we accomplish to work with theapplication domain then we might get:

6/21/2005 VG 2005

9 (10?) key questions from 1999

What is going on in medical applications?

Previously: dedicated high-end workstations

Hot (current) trend is client/server: Expensive high-end VG server based (Thin) client machines already available (& cheap)

Network is an issue, WWW is a problem Deployment solely dependent on networks