The present invention relates to a method for generating an 2-D projection directly
from a 3-D volume data, the method comprising the steps of determining a viewing
direction vector in a viewing frustum, determining a major axis of the direction
vector, resampling the volume data in the direction of the major axis, applying
a shear factorization to the resampled data; and rendering the factorized data.
The method provides a singularly warped image which avoids have to patch images
from multiple warp functions which, in turn, improves the quality of the final
image. Finally, the image allows a scene to be rendered from within the scene itself.
The invention can be applied to medical imaging and enable a surgeon to view an
image such as a CT scan with perspective as well as from within the scan itself,
providing the surgeon with an invaluable tool.