Article

Interactive Exploration of Large Remote Micro-CT Scans

Authors:

Steffen Prohaska,

Hans-Christian HegeAuthors Info & Claims

VIS '04: Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '04

Pages 345 - 352

https://doi.org/10.1109/VISUAL.2004.51

Published: 10 October 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Datasets of tens of gigabytes are becoming common in computational and experimental science. This development is driven by advances in imaging technology, producing detectors with growing resolutions, as well as availability of cheap processing power and memory capacity in commodity-based computing clusters. In this article we describe the design of a visualization system that allows scientists to interactively explore large remote data sets in an efficient and flexible way. The system is broadly applicable and currently used by medical scientists conducting an osteoporosis research project. Human vertebral bodies are scanned using a high resolution micro-CT scanner producing scans of roughly 8 GB size each. All participating research groups require access to the centrally stored data. Due to the rich internal bone structure, scientists need to interactively explore the full dataset at coarse levels, as well as visualize subvolumes of interest at the highest resolution. Our solution is based on HDF5 and GridFTP. When accessing data remotely, the HDF5 data processing pipeline is modified to support efficient retrieval of subvolumes. We reduce the overall latency and optimize throughput by executing high-level operations on the remote side. The GridFTP protocol is used to pass the HDF5 requests to a customized server. The approach takes full advantage of local graphics hardware for rendering. Interactive visualization is accomplished using a background thread to access the datasets stored in a multi-resolution format. A hierarchical volume renderer provides seamless integration of high resolution details with low resolution overviews.

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Cited By

Shi SHsu C(2015)A Survey of Interactive Remote Rendering SystemsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/271992147:4(1-29)Online publication date: 26-May-2015
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Beyer JHadwiger MPfister H(2015)State-of-the-Art in GPU-Based Large-Scale Volume VisualizationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1260534:8(13-37)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1111/cgf.12605
Kitaeff VWu CWicenec ACannon AVinsen KVarbanescu Avan Nieuwpoort RZwart SVarbanescu A(2012)SkuareViewProceedings of the 2012 workshop on High-Performance Computing for Astronomy Date10.1145/2286976.2286984(25-32)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2012
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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

VIS '04: Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '04

October 2004

667 pages

ISBN:0780387880

Sponsors

SIGGRAPH: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society

United States

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Published: 10 October 2004

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Cited By

Shi SHsu C(2015)A Survey of Interactive Remote Rendering SystemsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/271992147:4(1-29)Online publication date: 26-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2719921
Beyer JHadwiger MPfister H(2015)State-of-the-Art in GPU-Based Large-Scale Volume VisualizationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1260534:8(13-37)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1111/cgf.12605
Kitaeff VWu CWicenec ACannon AVinsen KVarbanescu Avan Nieuwpoort RZwart SVarbanescu A(2012)SkuareViewProceedings of the 2012 workshop on High-Performance Computing for Astronomy Date10.1145/2286976.2286984(25-32)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2286976.2286984
Shi SKamali MNahrstedt KHart JCampbell Rdel Bimbo AChang SSmeulders A(2010)A high-quality low-delay remote rendering system for 3D videoProceedings of the 18th ACM international conference on Multimedia10.1145/1873951.1874011(601-610)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1873951.1874011
Ahrens JWoodring JDeMarle DPatchett JMaltrud M(2009)Interactive remote large-scale data visualization via prioritized multi-resolution streamingProceedings of the 2009 Workshop on Ultrascale Visualization10.1145/1838544.1838545(1-10)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1838544.1838545
Eng DChoe Y(2008)Stereo pseudo 3D rendering for web-based display of scientific volumetric dataProceedings of the Fifth Eurographics / IEEE VGTC conference on Point-Based Graphics10.5555/2386410.2386423(73-80)Online publication date: 10-Aug-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2386410.2386423
Strasser JPascucci VMa K(2006)Multi-layered image caching for distributed rendering of large multiresolution datasetsProceedings of the 6th Eurographics conference on Parallel Graphics and Visualization10.5555/2386124.2386153(171-177)Online publication date: 11-May-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2386124.2386153

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