4D Dynamic Volume Rendering using Raycasting

Medical imaging has become one of the most used diagnostic tools in the medical profession in the last three decades. Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technologies have become widely adopted because of their ability to capture the human body in a non-invasive manner. A volumetric dataset is a series of orthogonal 2D slices captured at a regular interval, typically along the axis of the body from the head to the feet. Volume rendering is a computer graphics technique that allows volumetric data to be visualized and manipulated as a single 3D object. Some of the volume rendering methods are Isosurface rendering, image splatting , shear warp, texture slicing, and raycasting. CT and MRI hardware was limited to providing a single 3D scan of the human body. Functional imaging let capture of anatomical data over time.One of them is Functional MRI (fMRI), is used to capture changes in the human body over time.This paper presents creation of generic software capable of performing real-time 4D volume rendering via raycasting, on desktop.