Patent ID: 7136064

Claim:
A computerized method for rendering a three dimensional image, the method comprising: calculating a set of occluder shields in a voxel dataset using a transparency value associated with each voxel of the dataset, said calculation including: dividing the voxel data into a plurality of contextual regions, each of said contextual regions comprising a plurality of voxels, each of said voxels having a transparency value, and a position value; and for each contextual region performing the tasks of: opacity mapping the contextual region; determining if a zero order occluding shield is present; and if no zero order occluding shield is present, then determining if higher order occluding shields are present; applying the occluder shields to identify regions of the voxel data that do not contribute to the final image; and rendering the voxel dataset, said rendering excluding regions that do not contribute to the final image.