Volume rendering in radiation treatment planning

Successful treatment planning in radiation therapy depends in part on understanding the spatial relationship between patient anatomy and the distribution of radiation dose. Several visualizations based on volume rendering that offer potential solutions to this problem are presented. The visualizations use region boundary surfaces to display anatomy, polygonal meshes to display treatment beams, and isovalue contour surfaces to display dose. To improve perception of spatial relationships, metallic shading, surface and solid texturing, synthetic fog, shadows, and other artistic devices are used. Also outlined is a method based on 3-D mip maps for efficiently generating perspective volume renderings and beam´s-eye views