Patent ID: 7050054

Claim:
A volumetric data organization method for organizing data associated with active voxels in a voxel block, the voxel block comprising active voxels and non-active voxels where active voxels are those occupied voxels for which information has been obtained or provided and non-active voxels are unoccupied voxels, the method comprising: causing each active voxel in a column of voxels in the voxel block to be associated with a respective contiguous memory location in a first group of memory locations associated with said column while not causing any of the non-active voxels to be associated with said contiguous memory locations; and causing position information indicating positions of the active voxels in said column to be stored in respective said contiguous memory locations of said first group, wherein causing each active voxel to be associated with a respective contiguous memory location comprises determining the number of active voxels in said column.