A GPU-Supported Lossless compression scheme for rendering time-varying volume data

Jörg Mensmann

Timo Ropinski

Ulm University

Klaus Hinrichs

EG International Symposium on Volume Graphics 2010

Abstract

Since the size of time-varying volumetric data sets typically exceeds the amount of available GPU and main memory, out-of-core streaming techniques are required to support interactive rendering. To deal with the performance bottlenecks of hard-disk transfer rate and graphics bus bandwidth, we present a hybrid CPU/GPU scheme for lossless compression and data streaming that combines a temporal prediction model, which allows to exploit coherence between time steps, and variable-length coding with a fast block compression algorithm. This combination becomes possible by exploiting the CUDA computing architecture for unpacking and assembling data packets on the GPU. The system allows near-interactive performance even for rendering large real-world data sets with a low signal-to-noise-ratio, while not degrading image quality. It uses standard volume raycasting and can be easily combined with existing acceleration methods and advanced visualization techniques.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{mensmann2010gpu,
	title={A GPU-Supported Lossless compression scheme for rendering time-varying volume data},
	author={Mensmann, J{\"o}rg and Ropinski, Timo and Hinrichs, Klaus},
	booktitle={Proceedings of 8th IEEE VGTC / Eurographics International Symposium on Volume Graphics, VG@Eurographics 2010, Norrk{\"o}ping, Sweden, May 2-3, 2010}
	year={2010},
	pages={109--116},
	editor={Westermann, R{\"a}diger and Kindlmann, Gordon L.}
}