A hardware architecture for video rate smooth shading ofVolume

This paper describes a new architecture for generating smoothly shaded two dimensional images of volume data. This architecture ts into an image synthesis pipeline and uses only simple arithmetic operations and a look-up table to generate two dimensional images in real time. The shading algorithm is an extension of the grey-level gradient algorithm for shading volume data. The shading technique produces smooth images for vox-elized geometrical data and sampled volume data. Image synthesis from volume data in real time is an important technique in visualization and graphics systems.