Local Detail Enhancement for Volume Rendering under Global Illumination

Abstract

We present a novel method for realistic perception enhanced volume rendering. Compared with traditional lighting systems, that either tend to eliminate important local shapes and details in volume data or cannot offer interactive global illumination, our method can enhance the edges and curvatures within a volume under global illumination through a user-friendly interface. We first propose an interactive volumetric lighting model to both simulate scattering and enhance the local detail information. In this model, users only need to determine a key light source. Next, we propose a new cue to intensify the shape perception by enhancing the local edges and details. The cue can be pre-computed and thus we can still keep the rendering process running real-time. Experiments on a variety of volume data demonstrate that the proposed method can generate more details, and hence more realistic rendering results.