using the Avizo XLVolume Extension. Thus volume rendering can instantly highlight relevant features
of your data. Volume rendered images can be combined with any type of polygonal display. This
improves the usefulness of this technique significantly. Moreover, multiple data sets can be volume
rendered simultaneously – a unique feature of Avizo. Transfer functions with different characteristics
required for direct volume rendering can be either generated automatically or edited interactively using
an intuitive colormap editor. Avizo volume rendering can use the latest techniques for high quality
visualization effects such as lighting or shadows.
1.2.3.3 Isosurfaces
Isosurfaces are most commonly used for analyzing arbitrary scalar fields sampled on discrete grids.
Applied to 3D images, the method provides a very quick, yet sometimes sufficient method for recon-
structing polygonal surface models. Beside standard algorithms, Avizo provides an improved method,
which generates significantly fewer triangles with very little computational overhead. In this way, large
3D data sets can be displayed interactively even on smaller desktop graphics computers.
1.2.3.4 Large Volume Data
With the Avizo XLVolume Extension, even very large data sets that cannot be fully loaded in mem-
ory can be manipulated at interactive speed. Multi-resolution techniques can manage and visualize
extremely large amounts of volume data of up to hundreds of gigabytes. You can then, for instance,
quickly select a region of interest and extract down-sampled or partial data for further processing.
1.2.4 Image processing
1.2.4.1 Alignment of image slices
The image Align Slices enables you to build a consistent stack of images with manual or automatic
tools, if, for instance, physical cross sections have been shifted during image acquisition.
1.2.4.2 Image filters
Image features can be enhanced by applying a wide range of filters for controlling contrast, smoothing,
noise reduction and feature enhancement. See Section 4.8 More about Image Filtering.
1.2.4.3 Image segmentation
Segmentation means assigning labels to image voxels that identify and separate objects in a 3D image.
Avizo offers a large set of segmentation tools, ranging from purely manual to fully automatic: brush
(painting), lasso (contouring), magic wand (region growing), thresholding, intelligent scissors, contour
fitting (snakes), contour interpolation and extrapolation, wrapping, smoothing and de-noising filters,
4 Chapter 1: Introduction