Boundary emphasis transfer function generation based on HSL color space

Direct volume rendering has been received much attention since it need not to extract geometric primitives for visualization and its performance is generally better than surface rendering. Transfer functions, which are used for mapping scalar field to optical properties, are of vital importance in obtaining a sensible rendering result from volume data. Though traditional color transfer functions are in RGB color space, HSL color space that conveys semantic meanings is more intuitive and user-friendly. In this paper, we present a novel approach aims to emphasize and distinguish strong boundaries between different materials. We achieve it by using data value, gradient magnitude and dimension of the volumetric data to set opacity. Then, through a linear map from data value,gradient magnitude and second derivative to hue, saturation and lightness respectively, a color transfer function is obtained in HSL color space. Experimental tests on real-world datasets indicate that our method could achieve desirable rendering results with revealing important boundaries between different structures and indicating data value’s distribution in the volume by using different colors. KeywordsVolume rendering, transfer functions, boundary emphasis, HSL space