Patent ID: 8682053

Claim:
A method for sampling volume data of an object in an imaging device, the method comprising: creating a voxel dataset of a first volume associated with the object by way of a scanning device and saving the created voxel dataset in a main memory; defining a grid of sampling positions by casting a plurality of rays through the first volume and choosing a number of points along a respective ray; choosing a sampling access pattern from a plurality of sampling access patterns defining a sequence of the defined grid of sampling positions; selecting an interpolation scheme mapping the chosen sampling access pattern to a voxel access pattern defining a sequence of the voxels of the voxel dataset; according to the voxel access pattern, successively loading memory lines of the main memory including the data associated with the respective voxel into a cache memory in case a respective memory line is not already present in the cache memory; and processing the data associated with the respective voxel, wherein during said choosing of sampling access patterns, a block of sampling positions having a non-vanishing intersection with said grid is defined and wherein said plurality of sampling access patterns is restricted to the set of recursive subdivisions of the block.