A method and a corresponding apparatus for volume rendering of medical data sets comprises a display (11) for displaying at least one slice view (12) of a medical data set (18) of an object, in particular a patient. A user selection unit (13, 14, 15) enables a user to select a position on a structure of interest (SOI) in the at least one displayed slice view (12), a volume rendering unit (16) for determines a volume rendering (17) of the structure of interest (SOI) based on one or more first parameters. The first parameters characterize the view of the displayed volume rendering (17, 31) of the structure of interest (SOI), the volume rendering (17, 31) of the structure of interest (SOI) being displayed on the display (11). In order to achieve good volumetric views of the medical data set (18) requiring reduced user input the volume rendering unit (16) is designed for determining the first parameters automatically by considering the user-selected position and one or more second parameters, the second parameters characterizing at least one of the object, the structure of interest (SOI), the currently displayed slice view (12) and one or more previous volume renderings (17) of the structure of interest (SOI), and the volume rendering unit (16) is designed for determining the first parameters in that way that an optimized view on the displayed volume rendering (17) of the structure of interest (SOI) is achieved without additional user input apart from the user-selection of the position.