Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization

Direct Volume Rendering (DVR) is commonly used to visualize scalar fiends. Quality and significance of rendered images depend on the choice of appropriate transfer functions that assigns optical properties (e.g., color and opacity) to scalar values. We present a method that automatically generates a transfer function based on the topology of a isosurface i.e., a surface representing all locations where the scalar fiend assumes a certain value v, changes. We then generate a transfer fucntion that emphasizes on scalar values around those critical isovalues. Images rendered using the resulting transfer function reveal the fundamental topogical structure of a scalar data set.