2008 IGT Project Week Volume Rendering for IGT using CUDA

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Team: Xenios Papademeteris, John Onofrey, Noby Hata, Steve Pieper, Isaiah Norton

Goals: To use CUDA to accelerate the previous methods for vascular visualization and non-orthogonal cropping at Yale.

Approach: The concept is to take the currently used methods that rely on software-based raycasting and use CUDA to make them "real-time". We have some ideas as to how to do this in VTK and would like to see if there is pilot code in Slicer to do the same.

Results (to be completed and presented at the end of the week):

• We reviewed existing volume rendering implementation, either existing or under development
• We reviewed the ongoing rework of the Slicer3 Volume Rendering module by Alex Yarmarkovich
• We examined the CUDA code developed by Noby and Nicholas
  • Noby gave live demo of the CUDA rendering on CT and US data sets (transferred via OpenIGTLink)
  • Xenios and his group are integrating the CUDA code in BioImageSuite for further testing

Renderer Summary

• VTK 5.2
  • Well tested
  • Software ray caster is 'gold standard' for slow rendering
• VTK Edge
  • GPL'd Hardware ray caster
  • Not extensively tested by this group
• CUDA Renderer
  • NVidia Only
  • CUDA future unknown (OpenCL or other standards may supplant it)
  • Further integration and development needed
• GLSL Render from NCI
  • OpenGL Based
  • Cross platform performance unknown
  • Further integration needed
• MIST Renderer from Nagoya U (Japan)
  • Fast software renderer
  • Initial integration started, but not finished
• Other Volume Renderers
  • SCI Utah slivr
  • SCI Utah CUDA
  • Others?