Residency Octree: A Hybrid Approach for Scalable Web-Based Multi-Volume Rendering

Lukas Herzberger, Markus Hadwiger, Robert Kruger, Peter Sorger, Hanspeter Pfister, Eduard Groller, Johanna Beyer

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    We present a hybrid multi-volume rendering approach based on a novel Residency Octree that combines the advantages of out-of-core volume rendering using page tables with those of standard octrees. Octree approaches work by performing hierarchical tree traversal. However, in octree volume rendering, tree traversal and the selection of data resolution are intrinsically coupled. This makes fine-grained empty-space skipping costly. Page tables, on the other hand, allow access to any cached brick from any resolution. However, they do not offer a clear and efficient strategy for substituting missing high-resolution data with lower-resolution data. We enable flexible mixed-resolution out-of-core multi-volume rendering by decoupling the cache residency of multi-resolution data from a resolution-independent spatial subdivision determined by the tree. Instead of one-to-one node-to-brick correspondences, each residency octree node is mapped to a set of bricks from different resolution levels. This makes it possible to efficiently and adaptively choose and mix resolutions, adapt sampling rates, and compensate for cache misses. At the same time, residency octrees support fine-grained empty-space skipping, independent of the data subdivision used for caching. Finally, to facilitate collaboration and outreach, and to eliminate local data storage, our implementation is a web-based, pure client-side renderer using WebGPU and WebAssembly. Our method is faster than prior approaches and efficient for many data channels with a flexible and adaptive choice of data resolution.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)1380-1390
    Number of pages11
    JournalIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
    Volume30
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Jan 1 2024

    Keywords

    • large-scale data
    • multi-channel
    • multi-resolution
    • out-of-core rendering
    • ray-guided rendering
    • Volume rendering
    • web-based visualization

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Software
    • Signal Processing
    • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
    • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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