However, because of the size of the data sets, physicians often can only view the data non-interactively. Splatter , now running on SDSC's 256-processor CRAY T3E, performs interactive, direct volume rendering of large data sets, including data from the Visible Human Project at the National Library of Medicine. To render these data sets, Johnson and Genetti implemented the splatting algorithm for direct volume rendering. Splatting works by projecting each volume element, or voxel, from a data slice onto an image plane. By controlling the splatting, we can produce high-quality images.
Splatter s the volume.
The user also can specify color and opacity for the different materials in the volume. Viewing the Visible Human Data sets from subjects in the Visible Human Project consist of 1,734 to 5,189 slices and range in size from one to 10 gigabytes. Each section shows different ways that Splatter can isolate different data features. Using Splatter is as easy as loading a Web page containing the applet, which opens a window for requesting rendering resources and starting a new session. Access to the Splatter engine is controlled via a third piece of software that schedules multiple users over a predefined pool of processors.