Real-time volume rendering and tractography visualization on the web

Abstract

In the field of computer graphics, Volume Rendering techniques allow the visualization of 3D datasets, and specifically, Volume Ray-Casting renders images from volumetric datasets, typically used in some scientific areas, such as medical imaging -- This article aims to describe the development of a combined visualization of tractography and volume rendering of brain T1 MRI images in an integrated way -- An innovative web viewer for interactive visualization of neuro-imaging data has been developed based on WebGL -- This recently developed standard enables the clients to use the web viewer on a wide range of devices, with the only requirement of a compliant web-browser -- As the majority of the rendering tasks take place in the client machine, the effect of bottlenecks and server overloading are minimized -- The web application presented is able to compete with desktop tools, even supporting high graphical demands and facing challenges regarding performance and scalability -- The developed software modules are available as open source code and include MRI volume data and tractography generated by the Diffusion Toolkit, and connectivity data from the Connectome Mapping Toolkit -- Our contribution for the Volume Web Viewer implements early ray termination step according to the tractography depthmap, combining volume images and estimated white matter fibers -- Furthermore, the depthmap system extension can be used for visualization of other types of data, where geometric and volume elements are displayed simultaneously