High-quality web-based volume rendering in real-time

Three-dimension (3D) medical images on eHealth can facilitate early diagnosis and treatment planning for physicians and dentists anytime and anywhere. However, high-resolution 3D medical images created from most medical imaging devices are difficult to render interactively with high-quality in real-time on the client side. This paper tackles this problem. It presents a web-based client-server framework that provides apparent processing of high-quality volume rendering in real-time on personal computers and tablets. The framework employs the following technique. While zooming and rotating the volume rendered image, the graphic card on a client-side processes low-quality volume rendering. At the same time, images for performing high-quality rendering are being processed and streamed in from the server. When the interaction stops, the server completes the streaming process and the client can now display high-quality volume rendering. This would help visualizing 3D medical images in real-time and high-quality on web for fast diagnosis and treatment planning.