DYNAMIC ALGORITHM SELECTION FOR VOLUME RENDERING, ISOCONTOUR AND BODY EXTRACTION WITHIN A MULTIPLE-INSTRUCTION, MULTIPLE-DATA MULTIPROCESSOR

This is a methodology which reduces the time required to render a volume with extracted isocontours and inserted cutting plane and perform an arbitrary rotation within a three-dimensional volume. The volume is first partitioned among the processors of a multiple-instruction, multiple-data (MIMD) multiprocessor computer. As the user indicates the isocontour to be extracted, rotation, and cutting plane to be inserted into the image space volume, each processor independently selects the optimum algorithm for rendering the volume using the indicated display parameters on its local data set. If the processor is fully behind the cutting plane, a front-to-back (FTB) volume rendering algorithm is used. If the cutting plane lies behind the cutover point, then a back-to-front (BTF) volume rendering algorithm is used, otherwise the FTB volume rendering algorithm is used.