High-quality volume rendering using texture mapping hardware

We present a method for volume rendering of regular grids which takes advantage of 3D texture mapping hardware currently available on graphics workstations. Our method produces accurate shading for arbitrary and dynamically changing directional lights, viewing parameters, and transfer functions. This is achieved by hardware interpolating the data values and gradients before software classification and shading. The method works equally well for parallel and perspective projections. We present two approaches for our method: one which takes advantage of software ray casting optimizations and another which takes advantage of hardware blending acceleration.