Pimp My Volume
Volume Visualization - Scientific Visualization (CS 526)
In this project I created an application to visualize volumes. The input data is raw files obtained from MRI and CT scans. The user will be able to see Ray-Casting, Iso Surfaces and Splatting in action.
I used The Visualization Toolkit (vtk) with C# to write this application. I used a Windows Forms Control that uses a set of .net Wrappers for vtk to render data. The outcome was pretty good, considering the fact that the entire app is being software rendered.
There are several datasets available in The Volume Library. I used several of these including the Piggy Bank, the Knee, the Foot, et al.
The application allows you to specify parameters for Ray Casting, Iso Surfaces, and Splatting. You can (theoretically) create any number of splats, iso-surfaces and give any number of ray-casting mappings. You can mix and match the rendering methods to get awesome visualizations. In the end, you can save all your parameters to a file, so that you can start off where you left another time.
This "toy" can be downloaded at this location. Just download it and run setup. It will create a link for the application on your desktop. Double click on the link to run the application. The rest is intuition.
The tool reads datasets in .vtk format. There are datasets in this format for the Piggy Bank here and for the Foot here. You can get more by following these simple steps:
The Volume Library has files in .pvm format. There is also a converter from pvm to raw. Run it. My Volume Visualization app has an in-built raw to vtk converter in the Tools Menu. Use it to generate the vtk file. It is pretty intuitive. Catch me if you need the other datasets.
Click on the images above to see full screen version. I hope that you like it. :)
