Volume Rendering on Mobile Devices

The amount of GPU processing power for the mobile devices is increasing at a rapid pace. The leading high-end mobile GPUs offer similar performance found in medium category desktop PCs and laptops. Increased performance allows new and advanced computer graphics algorithms to be run on a mobile devices. Volume rendering needs complex computer graphics algorithm that requires high processing power and memory bandwidth from the GPUs. In theoretical part of this thesis the theory behind volume rendering algorithms and optimization techniques are introduced. Additionally, results from the existing research for mobile volume renderers and common volume rendering algorithm selections are analyzed. The study of this thesis focuses on different volume rendering algorithms that are evaluated and implemented on multiple different mobile GPU architectures. An analysis for the study results and suggestions for suitable mobile device volume rendering algorithms are provided