Comparison of Volume Rendering Algorithms

A extensive comparison of available algorithms for volume rendering has been performed by Meißner et al. [32]. While research has progressed since this study was performed, their basic findings are still valid. They conclude that the raycasting and splatting yield to similar image quality. The render times of these methods are very much dependent on the type of dataset and transfer function. Shear-warp and 3D texture mapping provide high performance, but at the cost of degraded image quality. Recent work has been able to improve the quality of texture mapping approaches [5]. Figure 2.6 displays an excerpt of the result images by Meißner et al.

Figure 2.6: Comparison of volume rendering algorithms [32]. (a) raycasting. (b) splatting. (c) shear-warp. (d) 3D texture mapping.

(a)	(b)	(c)	(d)