Patent ID: 8711144

Claim:
A system for artifact quantification in volume rendering, the system comprising: a memory operable to store a dataset representing a three-dimensional volume; a processor configured to volume render a two-dimensional representation of the three-dimensional volume from the dataset, configured to determine a quantity representing a rendering artifact from the volume rendering of the three-dimensional volume and in the single two-dimensional representation, the determining of the quantity being as a function of a perception-based visual quality metric, the quantity determined to represent one or more of gradient-based shading noise having a first pattern, edge non-smoothness having a second pattern, or opacity inconsistency due to size variation in anisotropic data having a third pattern, as the rendering artifact in the two-dimensional representation, and configured to identify the one or more of the rendering artifact as the gradient-based shading noise by the first pattern, as the edge non-smoothness by the second pattern, or as the opacity inconsistency by the third pattern; and a display operable to display the two-dimensional representation of the volume, the quantity, or both; wherein the determining of the quantity comprises correlating responses from a plurality of perception-based visual quality metrics to the types of rendering artifacts; wherein volume rendering comprises volume rendering a spherical phantom at a first viewing direction, further comprising volume rendering the spherical phantom at a second, different viewing direction; wherein correlating comprises identifying a greater response of one or more of the metrics at the first viewing direction than the second viewing direction; and wherein identifying the one or more of the rendering artifact comprises identifying opacity inconsistency by the third pattern, as a function of the correlation, as the rendering artifact.