An efficient camera path computation using image-space information in virtual endoscopy

Abstract

In virtual endoscopy, fast and accurate path generation and navigation is the most important feature. Previous methods made a center line of organ cavity by connecting consecutive points maximally distant from organ wall. However they have some problems to demand a lot of computation and extra storage for spatial data structures. We propose an efficient path computation algorithm. It determines camera direction for the next frame identifying a ray that has maximum depth in current frame. Camera position is determined by using the center of gravity of organ's cross-section. Entire camera path can be constructed by applying the operation in every frame. It doesn't require preprocessing and extra storage since it depends only on image-space information generated in rendering time. © Springer-Verlag 2004.