Nonphotorealistic rendering of medical volume data

The article introduces volumetric hatching, a novel technique that produces pen-and-ink-style images from medical volume data. Unlike previous approaches that generate full-surface models, our technique uses characteristics of the volume near the stroke being produced to generate a local intermediate surface. Because global isosurfaces can´t exactly model many medical subjects, our volume-based method has considerable advantages. Our method is largely insensitive to surface artifacts. We focus on hatching with line strokes to portray muscles, intestines, brains, and so on. Hatching with line strokes requires determining not just the position of the line strokes, but also their orientation. Thus, the strokes not only illustrate the subject´s shape, but also describe its character in some way - for example, by displaying fiber orientations for muscles.