Low-pass filter along ray in texture-based volume rendering

A novel low-pass filter method along viewing ray is presented for texture-based volume rendering, and the artifacts for low sampling rate is suppressed effectively in the method. The samples are computed first in programmable vertex processor by graphics processing unit, and then one dimensional low-pass filter is executed on each fragment in programmable fragment processor. With a linear transfer function, the method is better even than pre-integrated volume rendering while high-quality and real time rendering results is achieved, and the experiment results prove that the proposed method can be effectively used in the texture-based volume rendering.