Wavelet‐Based 3D Compression Scheme for Interactive Visualization of Very Large Volume Data

Abstract

Interactive visualization of very large volume data has been recognized as a task requiring great effort in a variety of science and engineering fields. In particular, such data usually places considerable demands on run‐time memory space. In this paper, we present an effective 3D compression scheme for interactive visualization of very large volume data, that exploits the power of wavelet theory. In designing our method, we have compromised between two important factors: high compression ratio and fast run‐time random access ability. Our experimental results on the Visual Human data sets show that our method achieves fairly good compression ratios. In addition, it minimizes the overhead caused during run‐time reconstruction of voxel values. This 3D compression scheme will be useful in developing many interactive visualization systems for huge volume data, especially when they are based on personal computers or workstations with limited memory.