Real-time exploration of regular volume data by adaptive reconstruction ofisosurfaces

We propose an adaptive approach for the fast reconstruction of isosurfaces from regular volume data at arbitrary levels of detail. The algorithm has b een designed to enable real-time navigation through complex structures whil e providing user-adjustable resolution levels. Since adaptive on the-fly re construction and rendering is performed from a hierarchical octree represen tation of the volume data, the method does not depend on preprocessing with respect to a specific isovalue, thus the user can browse interactively thr ough the set of all possible isosurfaces. Special attention is paid to the fixing of cracks in the surface where the adaptive reconstruction level cha nges and to the efficient estimation of the isosurface's curvature.