Space leaping 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 volume data set is partitioned into a plurality of blocks of voxels. Each voxel of each of the plurality of the blocks is tested to determine whether the voxel contributes to the image. An empty bit is set in an array for each block of voxels only if none of the voxels of the block contribute to the image, and the volume data set is processed according to the array of empty bits. <IMAGE>