Patent ID: 8115766

Claim:
A method for rendering a flow and a volume, the method being executed by a processor and comprising the steps of: generating with the processor a preintegrated table, the preintegrated table having a plurality of entries, each of the plurality of entries having color information and opacity information; generating with the processor illustrative effects based on the plurality of entries of the preintegrated table; displaying on a display coupled to the processor the illustrative effects, wherein the illustrative effects illustrate flow information and volume information; wherein the step of generating illustrative effects further comprises the step of masking the plurality of entries of the preintegrated table using view dependent gradient magnitudes; and wherein the step of masking the plurality of entries of the preintegrated table further comprises the step of scaling each entry of the plurality of entries of the preintegrated table using the equation: ω ⁡ (  s ( f ) - s ( b ) l  ) p , where ω is an artificial user-defined opacity scaling factor, p is a scalar that controls how much the gradient magnitude affects the opacity of each the plurality of entries of the preintegrated table, and l is a distance between an entry point s (f) of a ray passing though the volume and an exit point s (b) of the ray passing through the volume.