Abstract:
This work addresses some of the most pressing issues considering the assembly of a virtual reality system: the data preprocessing and preparation, the data visualization, the interaction with the data, and their display. The work presents problem-tailored algorithms, as well as general strategies for tackling the introduced problems. In particular, a new algorithm for segmenting image and volume data is discussed, addressing foremost medical applications in general. Moreover, a detailed discussion on visualization issues of data containing a time dimension is provided, demonstrating a set of visualization and interaction props for the analysis of historical events in time.
We describe a set of tools for simultaneously visualization of various parameters of interest and for interactive study of historical events.
In addition, the navigation in general is analyzed, as well as the remote object
manipulation in virtual environments, presenting a new interaction metaphor: the
through-the-lens metaphor. Based on this new concept, a set of navigation tools is introduced, which exploit features of existing techniques, attempting to overcome their limitations and to enable more powerful interaction.
Finally, in order to enable fast rendering of the visualized data, two algorithms for accelerating the rendering performance of a virtual reality system are proposed. Each of them exploits particular characteristics of the representation: (1) an image-based rendering approach based on the features of the introduced through-the-lens tools is presented, (2) the stereo rendering of large scenes is addressed in general.