A 3D texture-based octree volume visualization algorithm

We present a 3D texture based Octree Volume Visualization algorithm that combines 3D texture hardware and hierarchical representation of data sets to obtain multiresolution renderings of very large data sets. The algortihm exploits advantages of both octree representation and 3D texture hardware. The basis of the algorithm is to take advantage of nearly iso-valued areas of the volume and regions of no interest to compute a more synthetical volume texture representation. A new volume-texture assignation policy allows to exploit 3D texture volume visualization technique on large data sets. The algorithm guarantees hight quality image for regions of maximal interest.