Dynamic scene generation and software parallel rendering of anatomical structures

This thesis discusses two related topics, a system for generating scenes of 3-D anatomical structures, and the implementation of parallel algorithms for 3-D rendering. In an educational setting, 3-D scenes help students discover relationships between various anatomical structures. In a clinical environment, physicians can use 3-D scenes to examine how anatomical structures are effected by disease or injury. In order for a scene generation system to be usable, scenes must be rendered as fast as possible. One approach to increase rendering performance is to use parallel algorithms to take advantage of multi-processor or multi-workstation architectures