Fast projection-based ray-casting algorithm for rendering curvilinear volumes

We present an efficient and robust ray-casting algorithm for directly rende ring a curvilinear volume of arbitrarily-shaped cells. By projecting cell-f aces onto the image plane, we have effectively addressed three critical ste ps of the ray-casting process, namely finding the entry eel-faces far a ray , traversing along the ray from one cell to another, and reconstructing dat a Values at the ray/cell-face intersections. Our algorithm significantly re duces rendering time. alleviates memory space consumption. and overcomes th e conventional limitation requiring cells to be convex. Application of this algorithm to several commonly used curvilinear data sets has produced a fa vorable performance when compared with recently reported algorithms.