Fractal Volume Rendering

Efficient visualization of large volumetric data is a challenge for image processing community. In this paper, we present a novel volume rendering algorithm based on the concept of fractal. It consists of dividing the volumetric data set into sub-blocks, calculating the 3D fractal coefficients of each sub-block, projecting them to 2D image plane, and generating sub-images through 2D inverse fractal transform. The final rendered image is then obtained by simply summing the sub-images. Compared to the conventional ray casting technique, the proposed fractal volume rendering (FVR) method presents the advantage of reducing time complexity as well as memory complexity while maintaining good rendering quality. Moreover, the progressive refinement is supported owing to the iterative convergent process of sub-image generation