Volume Rendering

This report summarizes my research on the visualization of scalar fields and the rendering of participating media. A strong focus of my work is on the development of optical models for exploring and visualizing volumetric data sets interactively. In particular, my research is concentrated on goal-oriented optical models that offer simple control over the visual properties of a visualization combined with high performance. In addition, the perception of spatial depth and size of volumetric, semi-transparent features plays an important role in my work. For this purpose, I study and develop new methods to efficiently illuminate volumetric data sets with a focus on intuitive parameter control. For visualizing large data sets on distributed clusters, I also develop parallel volume rendering algorithms, focusing on load balancing and caching strategies. With physically-based rendering of participating media, the optical models are strictly given by the laws of radiative transfer and high fidelity is a major goal. In this field, my work introduces an optical model from physics to graphics that rigorously describes the complex light transport in participating media with a spatially varying index of refraction.