Gelder et al. implement 3D texture mapping which not only
produces a high quality 3D image but also has a rendering speed that
approaches two
orders of magnitude faster than existing techniques [11]. In their
most recent technical report they found a new and easy-to-implement method
for direct volume rendering that uses 3D texture maps for acceleration and
incorporates directional lighting [12]. In this paper,
the implementation is called Voltx which yields high quality images at
nearly interactive speeds on workstations with hardware support for 3D texture
maps. In the paper of Gelder et al., two major steps in this method are
(1) create the texture map and (2) render the slices [11].