Early ray termination in a parallel pipelined volume rendering system

摘要

A method renders a volume data set as an image in a volume rendering system. The volume data set includes a plurality of voxels stored in a memory. The volume rendering system includes a plurality of parallel processing pipelines. The image includes a plurality of pixels stored in the memory. A set of rays are cast through the volume data set. The volume data set is partitioned into a plurality of sections aligned with the sets of rays. Voxels along each ray of each set are sequentially interpolated voxels in only one of the plurality of pipelines to generate samples only as long as the samples contribute to the image.