US Patent 7616199 System and method for interleaved slice volume rendering

A method for volume rendering a digitized image includes providing a digitized 3-dimensional image with a plurality of 2-dimensional slices comprised of a plurality of intensities corresponding to a domain of points on a 2-dimensional grid, interleaving said slices so that a predetermined number of slices are represented within 2-dimensional textures comprising slabs. Each said slab comprises a plurality of polygons. Weighting functions are generated for each slice of each polygon of a slab, and using said weighting functions, computing a trilinarly interpolated sample from multiple bilinearly interpolated samples value for each slice of said polygon.