Efficient Bidirectional Path Tracing by Randomized Quasi-Monte Carlo Integration

As opposed to Monte Carlo integration the quasi-Monte Carlo method does not allow for an (consistent) error estimate from the samples used for the integral approximation. In addition the deterministic error bound of quasi-Monte Carlo integration is not accessible in the setting of computer graphics, since usually the integrands are of unbounded variation. The structure of the high dimensional functionals to be computed for photorealistic image synthesis implies the application of the randomized quasi-Monte Carlo method. Thus we can exploit low discrepancy sampling and at the same time we can estimate the variance. The resulting technique is much more efficient than previous bidirectional path tracing algorithms