VISUALIZATION OF VOLUME DATA IN CONFOCAL MICROSCOPY - COMPARISON AND IMPROVEMENTS OF VOLUME RENDERING METHODS

Confocal microscopes routinely produce three-dimensional data sets. Th e visualization of these digital volumes is currently performed by one surface rendering or volume rendering approach, In this paper, we des cribe improvements developed in the field of volume rendering, We focu sed on three methods: parallelepiped face mapping: the rotation-projec tion method (with or without stereoscopy, with different matters and t ransparencies); the voxel ray-tracing method. We compared the possibil ities of these different algorithms, in terms of quality of rendering, of computation load and as an essential aid to study the 3D organizat ion of biological specimens.