Research For Techniques Of Parallel Volume Rendering Based On COW

The diploma thesis firstly describes the background and successful fields of volume rendering, then makes a thoroughly study on its popular algorithms. Compare to traditional surface representation direct volume rendering technique has got its own advantages, but because of the large size of volume data the rendering speed becomes the bottleneck of volume rendering. The main research fields of volume rendering are reducing time the whole process consumed and improving the image quality. After comprehending the domestic and international achievements of the volume rendering, we present a new method using multi reconstruction kernels to improve image quality of splatting algorithm. A high-quality parallel volume visualization system based on cluster of workstations has been developed which gives a speedup of the volume rendering process.Splatting algorithm, relying on its high picture quality, relatively high-speed and ability to freely choosing voxels become the best one in Object-Order volume rendering. We carry out an in-depth study on splatting. Due to its mathematics principle, reconstruction kernels are the key of the algorithm, we introduce the criterion to choose proper reconstruction kernels. We present a new method for splatting process, different reconstruction kernels are applied according to the property of voxels. As a result, the outcome picture will have more details than before. Since the reconstruction kernels can be computed before the rendering process, the new method can achieve the better image quality and don't obviously increase the rendering time.The cluster of workstation model aims at using the existent hardware via high-speed network structure to achieve the capability of mainframe. The thesis makes use of message passing mechanism to develop a parallel volume rendering. The design bases one the Windows system and takes the master-slave task distribute model. Using a dynamic task assign method ensure the whole parallel computing platform get load-balance. The experimentation proved that the parallel mechanism we designed have speedup the volume rendering process. It especially adapts to the large-scaled volume rendering task.At last, we summarizes the thesis, points out the future explore directions.