@phdthesis\{iglesias-2011-,
title =      "Real-time GPU-accelerated Out-of-Core Rendering and Light-field 
              Display Visualization for Improved Massive Volume Understanding",
author =     "Jos\'{e} A. Iglesias Guiti\'{a}n",
year =       "2008",
abstract =   "Nowadays huge digital models are becoming increasingly available
              for a number of different applications ranging from CAD, 
              industrial design to medicine and natural sciences. Particularly, 
              in the field of medicine, data acquisition devices such as MRI or 
              CT scanners routinely produce huge volumetric datasets. Currently, 
              these datasets can easily reach dimensions of 1 gigavoxel and 
              datasets larger than that are not uncommon.
              This thesis focuses on efficient methods for the interactive 
              exploration of such large volumes using direct volume visualization 
              techniques on commodity platforms. To reach this goal specialized 
              multi-resolution structures and algorithms, which are able to 
              directly render volumes of potentially unlimited size are introduced. 
              The developed techniques are output sensitive and their rendering costs 
              depend only on the complexity of the generated images and not on the 
              complexity of the input datasets. The advanced characteristics of modern 
              GPGPU architectures are exploited and combined with an out-of-core 
              framework in order to provide a more flexible, scalable and efficient 
              implementation of these algorithms and data structures on single GPUs 
              and GPU clusters.
              To improve visual perception and understanding, the use of novel 3D 
              display technology based on a light-field approach is introduced. 
              This kind of device allows multiple naked-eye users to perceive virtual 
              objects floating inside the display workspace, exploiting the stereo 
              and horizontal parallax. A set of specialized and interactive illustrative 
              techniques capable of providing different contextual information in 
              different areas of the display, as well as an out-of-core CUDA based 
              ray-casting engine with a number of improvements over current GPU volume 
              ray-casters are both reported. The possibilities of the system are 
              demonstrated by the multi-user interactive exploration of 64-GVoxel 
              datasets on a 35-MPixel light-field display driven by a cluster of PCs.",
school =     "Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari",
month =      3,
keywords =   "computer graphics, scientific visualization, medical imaging, volume rendering,
              ray-casting, illustrative rendering, level-of-detail, light-field displays",
url =        "http://www.crs4.it/vic/cgi-bin/bib-page.cgi?id=%27Iglesias:2011:RGO%27",
}