Abstract

Iso-surface extraction is one of the most important approaches for volume rendering, and iso-contouring algorithm is one of the most effective methods for iso-surface extraction. Unlike most other methods having their search domain to be the whole data-set, iso-contouring algorithm does its search only on a relatively small subset of the original data-set. This subset, called a seed-set, has the property that every iso-surface must intersect with it, and it could be built at the preprocessing time.

When an iso-value is given at the run time, iso-contouring algorithm starts from the intersected cells in the seed-set, and gradually propagates to form the whole iso-surface. As smaller seed-sets offer less cell searching time, most existing iso-contouring algorithms concentrate on how to identify an optimal seed-set.

In this paper, we propose a new and efficient approach for seed-set construction. This algorithm could reduce the size of the seed-set and speed up the performance for iso-surface extraction.

 Keyword: Iso-surface Extraction, Volume Rendering, iso-contouring algorithm, Seed-set