Progressive Iso-Surfaces for the World Wide Web
Due to the exponentially increasing size of volume datasets, volume data
base servers are nowadays often used to store and maintain such datasets.
These servers can be accessed by a large variety of client systems, ranging
from low end PCs to high end graphics workstations. The visualization of
volume data requires distributed applications, which allow the inspections
of the volume data interactively by balancing rendering quality and real
time performance. This issue is very important for distributed applications
on the World Wide Web (WWW), which still suffers from network bandwidth
restrictions.
We overcome these restrictions by using a progressive algorithm, which
generates a multiresolution surface representation of a volume dataset
for a given iso-value. This offers the fundamental framework for progressive
transmission and level-of-detail (LOD) control. We developed a new web-based
iso-surface visualization tool which uses the concept of progressive iso-surfaces.
System Requirements
Microsoft Internet Explorer
4.x
or
Netscape
Communicator 4.04 with JDK1.1 patch
VRML 2.0 plugin (e.g. CosmoPlayer
, WorldView)
add CosmoPlayer classes to your CLASSPATH environment variable
(UNIX: setenv CLASSPATH /usr/CosmoPlayer/classes)
Quick Instructions
The visualization application consists of a VRML plugin and a JAVA
applet, which is attached to the bottom of the plugin.
VRML plug-in and Java applet
Visualization Steps:
-
Choose a volume dataset by selecting a picture and pressing the "Load"-button
(1)
-
Select a coarse level of detail, e.g. 4 (2)
-
Choose a iso-value (3):
Spherical harmonic function (Iso-Value: 1000-15000)
1.1-Difluorpropane 2 (Iso-Value: -200,100)
Bignics (Iso-Value: 260)
Plane Wing (Iso-Value: 0.5-1.5)
-
Start the transmission of the iso-surface by pressing the "Start"-button
(4). You can inspect the Iso-surface, while the data is transmitted with
the VRML plugin.
-
Switch back to a lower level of detail by dragging the slider (5) to the
left.
-
Refine the iso-surface by dragging the slider (2) to the right and pressing
the "Start"-button (4)
The Java AWT 1.1 user interface
Click to go to the online demo (Java AWT 1.1)
Click to go to the online demo (Java
Foundation Classes GUI)
Klaus Engel (engel@immd9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de)
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