Post-rendering Enhancement of Volumes

The paper presents an approach to visually enhance representations of volume data as a means to improve volume visualization. Direct volume rendering is employed to represent several volume data sets, using the popular Ray Casting algorithm. The result is rendered to a texture via an off-screen framebuffer, which then goes through a post-rendering processing stage. This stage involves the application of image enhancement techniques such as the use of spatial filters, to produce clearer, sharper, and less noisy images of the rendered volume. Depending on the specifics of the volumetric data set, post-rendering enhancement may bring forth more relevant visual information or otherwise improve the overall quality of the resulting images.