Extending the BSSRDF Model to Thin, Highly Diffusing Materials

We examine two papers [Jensen et al. 2001] and [Jensen and Buhler 2002] on rendering the subsurface scattering phenomenon using the diffusion approximation and discuss a possible extension of the method. In particular, we consider relaxing the assumptions of a semi-infinite homogeneous planar media and allowing for thin, highly diffusing materials. Our method, like the previous work, is inspired by papers from the medical optics community, but as far as we know, it has not been applied to computer graphics in the past. The extension leverages the strengths of the method, but generalizes in an appropriate way given some assumptions. We present several images and rendering times for comparison from our implementation to show that our extensions work well in practice.