2010 NAMIC Project week: Volume Rendering for Virtual Colonoscopy

Key Investigators

• MGH: Yin Wu
• MGH: Hiro Yoshida

• Isomics, Inc: Steve Pieper
• BWH: Ron Kikinis

Objective

Pursure volume rendering that is suitable for real-time and interactive virtual colonoscopy display.

The objectives of this project is to:

• Examine internal volume rendering engines (open source) availabel in Slicer
• Provide external volume rendering engines (closed source) for virtual colonoscopy
• Compare the performance of these volume rendering engines.
• Compare the advantages and disadvantages of these volume rendering engines in real-time high-quality virtual colonoscopy navigation

Approach, Plan

Several virtual colonoscopy datasets will be rendered by use of the below volume rendering routines.

• VTK GPU Raycasting in slicer 3.6 (GLSL)
• Microsoft research (MSR) volume rendering (CUDA, closed source)

Their performance will be compared based on various metrics.

Progress

The two volume rendering routines are installed on a single computer (single CUDA-based GPU) for rendering the virtual colonoscopy datasets as well as for performance comparison purposes.

Delivery Mechanism

A table that shows a comparison of the above two rendering engines in terms of

• rendering performance and
• advantages and disadvantages in rendering virtual colonoscopy datasets in clinical settings

will be delivered.

References