Fast rotation of volume data on parallel architectures

An algorithm for rendering of orthographic views of volume data on data-parallel computer architectures is described. In particular, the problem or rotating the volume in regard to the communication overhead associated with finely distributed memory is analyzed. An earlier technique (shear decomposition) is extended to 3D, and it is shown how this can be mapped onto a data-parallel architecture using only grid communication during the resampling associated with the rotation. The rendering uses efficient parallel computation constructs that allow one to use sophisticated shading models and still maintain high-speed throughout. This algorithm has been implemented on the connection machine and is used in an interactive volume-rendering application, with multiple frames-per-second performance