TY - GEN A1 - Kähler, Ralf A1 - Simon, Mark A1 - Hege, Hans-Christian T1 - Fast Volume Rendering of Sparse High-Resolution Datasets Using Adaptive Mesh Refinement Hierarchies N2 - In this paper we present an algorithm that accelerates 3D texture-based volume rendering of large and sparse data sets. A hierarchical data structure (known as AMR tree) consisting of nested uniform grids is employed in order to efficiently encode regions of interest. The hierarchies resulting from this kind of space partitioning yield a good balance between the amount of volume to render and the number of texture bricks -- a prerequisite for fast rendering. Comparing our approach to an octree based algorithm we show that our algorithm increases rendering performance significantly for sparse data. A further advantage is that less parameter tuning is necessary. T3 - ZIB-Report - 01-25 KW - scalar field visualization KW - volume visualization KW - volume rendering KW - 3D texture mapping KW - hierarchical space partitioning KW - AMR tree KW - octree KW - spar Y1 - 2001 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-6516 ER -