FOURIER VOLUME RENDERING

In computer graphics we have traditionally rendered images of data sets specified spatially. Here, we present a volume rendering technique that operates on a frequency domain representation of the data set and that efficiently generates line integral projections of the spatial data it represents. The motivation for this approach is that the Fourier Projection-Slice Theorem allows us to compute 2-D projections of 3-D data sets using only a 2-D slice of the data in the frequency domain. In general, these ''X-ray-like'' images can be rendered at a significantly lower computational cost than images generated by current volume rendering techniques. Additionally, assurances of image accuracy can be made.