Fast ambient occlusion for direct volume rendering

摘要

A method of direct volume rendering is provided comprising combining ambient occlusion volumes terms from a plurality of different filtered volumes using filters with different radii. During an ambient occlusion computation phase, the method obtains ambient occlusion terms from a plurality of different filtered volumes and, combining the ambient occlusion terms from the plurality of different filtered volumes into a composite ambient volume occlusion. During a subsequent volume rendering phase, data acquired from the subject is processed using the composite ambient volume occlusion to obtain a shaded rendition of an image of the subject.