Development of a volume rendering system using 3D texture compression techniques on general-purpose personal computers

In this paper, we present the development of a high-speed volume rendering system that combines 3D texture compression and parallel programming techniques for rendering multiple high-resolution 3D images obtained with medical or industrial CT. The 3D texture compression algorithm (DXT5) provides extremely high efficiency since it reduces the memory consumption to 1/4 of the original without having a negative impact on the image quality or display speed. By using this approach, it is possible to use personal computers with general-purpose graphics capabilities to display high-resolution 3D images or groups of multiple 3D images obtained with medical or industrial CT in real time.