VIZARD II: An FPGA-based Interactive Volume Rendering System

Abstract

In this paper we present a volume rendering system that implements a Direct Volume Rendering algorithm on a Xilinx FPGA being capable of visualizing 3D-datasets with highest image quality at interactive frame rate. The volume renderer utilizes a cache optimized memory scheme for maximum memory bandwidth and a fully pipelined architecture of the computational expensive rendering calculations. The used ray-casting algorithm was adapted in critical parts to fit the specific need of an efficient hardware usage, with respect to available resources and computational power, without limiting rendering features.

Using a FPGA approach offers full flexibility to the implementation of the algorithm making it easy to adapt and extend new features to the rendering pipeline without the need of time consuming redesigns, especially important in a scientific environment.