Illustrative Rendering and Multi-Touch Exploration of DTI data and Its Context

Master's thesis by Pjotr Svetachov

Pjotr presents an interactive illustrative visualization method that is inspired by traditional pen-and-ink illustrations styles as can be found in medical textbooks. The main goal of this technique is to render DTI fiber tracts and the context around them. The context can consist of the brain surface, the skull, or object such as tumors. These surfaces are extracted from segmentation data or are generated with a fast iso-surface extraction method. Fiber tracts are rendered using the depth-dependent halos method while the context is rendered with a hatching style which is visually similar to that of the fibers. The hatching uses a real-time slice-based rendering method which is guided by ambient occlusion. Pjotr also provides a way to explore the context around the fiber tracts through a set of cutting planes where gray matter is indicated using stippling. All these methods are implemented using GPU techniques and, thus, work in real-time. However, care was taken to also be able to produce high quality images for print reproduction. I also investigate the possibilities of multi-touch interaction to explore the fiber tracts and the context. Using a intuitive frame-based interaction technique, the screen is stripped of clutter (such as control widgets and toolbars). An informal evaluation with domain experts assert the success of the methods developed.

You can download Pjotr Svetachov's Master's thesis here. Pjotr's work also lead to a journal publication of the visualization technique at EuroVis 2010 as well as to a journal publication of the interaction method at VIS 2010.

Videos:

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