Interactive Volume Rendering Systems for Large Scale Multiple Volumes With Multiple Channels

Volume rendering is a very important visualization tool in many scientific disciplines. Scientists at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) use high resolution electron and confocal light microscopes to scan biological samples at greatly varying levels of scale (Centimeters to micrometers), producing large three-dimensional data sets with multiple data channels. Rendering these data sets interactively requires the combination of several state-of-the-art volume rendering algorithms and technologies in order to correctly display multiple nested volumes in real-time. This paper presents key requirements to achieve interactive rendering of multiple multi-channel volume data sets, as well as exhaustive reviews of various approaches in two aspects: volume rendering algorithms and memory management.