PARAVOL: Parallel Volume Rendering for Virtual Medicine

PARAVOL is a system under construction that combines software and hardwarerenderers. The system consists of the Fuzzy-Set Renderer (FSR), which runs on a SiliconGraphics Reality Engine, and the Active Ray-Tracer (ART), which runs on the Cray T3D. FSR utilizes hardware-based texture mapping to deliver real-time, medium quality, volume rendered images. It is geared mainly to provide a navigation aid and a tool for preliminary data exploration. Interaction is multisensory, combining various input devices and future haptic feedback. Rendering parameters are passed from the FSR front end to the ART renderer. It is based on a ray-stacking mechanism that supports latency hiding by postponing computation on inactive rays. It optimizes memory usage and utilizes a cache-only-memory organization to achieve high quality rendering while demonstrating linear speedup.