High Definition Volume Rendering® is a proprietary technique, developed by Fovia, that delivers unparalleled image quality and rendering performance. Comparing Fovia’s High Definition Volume Rendering® to “traditional” volume rendering is like comparing high definition television to traditional television – in both cases, the “High Definition” version produces far sharper and crisper images.

No. It is too computationally intensive for traditional volume rendering methods to achieve interactive High Definition Volume Rendering®.

Yes. Movies and images rendered with our HDVR™ engine can be found under the gallery menu.

See it for yourself. The best way to appreciate High Definition Volume Rendering® is via a side-by-side comparison. The exact same datasets (that you provide) should be rendered with both Fovia’s HDVR™ engine and your current volume rendering solution and the quality and performance should be compared side-by-side. We’re confident that once you experience High Definition Volume Rendering®, you will not want to return to your current solution. Please e-mail us at sales@fovia.com to inquire about arranging a side-by-side comparison.

Yes. Supersampling is the only rendering mode we use, which is one of the keys to the quality of our HDVR™ engine.

No. Although most of our competitors use these techniques, High Definition Volume Rendering® would not be possible if we did.

No. Both of these approaches result in significant scalability limitations. We are a true, software-only solution.

Yes. Fovia’s HDVR™ engine works with any off-the-shelf hardware that meets the following requirements: laptop or desktop with Intel/AMD x86-32/64-SSE2 and 1GB memory. Since our solution is highly scalable, additional processing power and larger memory will increase performance very efficiently.

No.

Yes. Our HDVR™ engine allows users maximum flexibility to modify ALL rendering parameters in real time, without preprocessing and without any speed or quality penalties. This is an essential element of our solution.

We support Parallel and Perspective Volume Rendering, MIP, Fading MIP, MPR, Curved MPR, RaySum and MinIP.

The volume 4096x4096x4096 is the current upper limit for our HDVR™ engine, far larger than the images being generated by state-of-the-art scanners (which typically generate slices that are 512x512x“Z”).

Other volume rendering solutions claim they can handle 4,000 slices, but this is not the same as being able to render them. These solutions downsample or resample sub-volumes of the original data, as they are unable to truly render the entire dataset. Our HDVR™ engine can actually render these large volumes, resulting in superior quality and performance.

Yes. The ability to deliver non-compromised remote renderings (including via the internet or over wireless connections) is one of the main advantages of our system. With our HDVR™ architecture, any networked PC or laptop can serve as an advanced 3D processing workstation, enabling a paradigm shift in medical imaging workflow. To ensure maximum flexibility, we support both Windows and Macintosh-based clients.

Yes. Our HDVR™ engine is optimized for 16 CPUs and can effectively utilize from 1 to 16 CPUs.

Fovia’s non-video card-based architecture provides near linear scalability for up to 16 CPUs. Competitive solutions that rely on brute force volume rendering and/or video cards will saturate memory bandwidth with just 1-2 CPUs.

Extremely scalable. To illustrate, let’s compare two datasets – 512x512x512 vs. 512x512x4096. The 4096 slice dataset is 8 times larger than the 512 slice dataset, and one might expect it to be rendered 8x slower. With our HDVR™ engine, however, the speed difference is not 8x, but approximately 10%.

Extremely scalable. First, unlike many alternative approaches, we do not stretch our images, and all images, large or small, are generated directly by our High Definition Volume Rendering® engine. To illustrate scalability, let’s compare two projections – 512x512 vs.1024x1024. The larger projection is 4 times bigger than the smaller one, and one might expect it to be rendered 4x slower. With our HDVR™ engine, however, the speed difference is not 4x, but approximately 1.7x.

Yes. Our HDVR™ engine is “cluster ready.” We support clustering at both the DCOM and TCP/IP levels, providing maximum flexibility to suit your architectural requirements.

We believe that scalability is one of the most important issues facing the medical imaging industry. The amount of data being acquired by modern scanners is growing extremely rapidly, placing increasing pressure on volume rendering technologies. Our algorithms and architecture are designed to take full advantage of the future directions in both medical imaging and computing – larger datasets, larger projection displays, dual-core processors, multi-CPU environments and clustering – without sacrificing quality or performance. Not only does our HDVR™ engine provide unparalleled image quality and rendering performance today, but our solution is designed to broaden the gap between us and our competitors in the future. Solutions that rely on specialized hardware and/or video cards are at a significant disadvantage in terms of scalability.

Yes. We support instant, point-and-click segmentation, arbitrary cut planes and freehand cutting.

Yes. We support instant, point-and-click measurement, accurate to the subvoxel level.

No. We do not require OpenGL, DirectX or any third-party 3D graphic library; our code is self-sufficient.

We support Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003, RedHat Linux, and other Linux-based distributions supported by Intel’s C++/8.0 compiler.

We support output images up to 4096X4096 pixels with no stretching. Supported image formats inlude 24-bit RGB, 256 levels of gray and JPEG/PNG for client/server mode.

No. Our HDVR™ engine does not stretch rendering images to support large viewports. We support any viewport up to 4096x4096 pixels without stretching.

We support Opacity and RGB transfer functions for volume rendering, and window level for MIP, Fading MIP, MPR, MinIP and RaySum. All transfer functions are modifiable interactively with no performance impact.

Yes. Fly-through does not require precomputation of the fly-path, and therefore can be adjusted interactively.

Yes. See the stereo images section of our website, under the gallery menu.

Yes. See the features section of our website, under the products menu.

We support any field that uses volumetric data, including the biosciences, geosciences and industrial engineering. See “Data” Format” under the features section of our website. E-mail us at info@fovia.com for additional information.

We have devoted nearly all of our time and resources developing the world’s only High Definition Volume Rendering® solution, and virtually none for marketing and related activities.

GE Healthcare, the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of medical imaging equipment, is our first customer.

We are currently licensing our technology on an OEM basis to modality manufacturers, PACS companies and other entities that can benefit from integrating our High Definition Volume Rendering® engine into their products. If you are an OEM that is interested in integrating our solution, e-mail us at sales@fovia.com to arrange for a demonstration. If you are an end user (i.e., a physician) who wants to use our solution, tell your modality manufacturer and PACS vendor that you want High Definition Volume Rendering® by Fovia, and e-mail us at sales@fovia.com so we can follow-up with them as well.

Very easy. We are strictly an OEM supplier, and we have built our solution to be extremely easy to integrate. All of the rendering parameters (including rendering type) are united in one structure. We use pure C++ wrapping, which is identical for Windows and UNIX. For Windows, we also support ActiveX components, COM and DCOM clustering.

E-mail us at info@fovia.com with your questions or to arrange for a demonstration.