View-Dependent Rendering of Large-Scale Molecular Models using Level of Detail

Abstract

Real-time surface rendering of large-scale molecular models such as a colon bacillus requires a great number of polygons to be displayed. Since a long latency of display and manipulation is fatal in maintaining presence in a virtual environment, high performance computing power and high quality graphical components are required to exercise realtime rendering of large-scale molecular model. Such as a colon bacillus. The rendering requires to provide high quality images of a critical part which is called as an active site combines with other molecule like a new drug. We propose an algorithm which enables a PC level computer to render and display large-scale molecular models in real-time. The proposed algorithm adaptively visualizes large-scale molecular models and support high quality rendering of active site. We tested our algorithm with molecular models of which polygons range from 533,774 polygons to 2,656,246 polygons. Our system enables biologists to display and manipulate large-scale molecular models in real-time which cannot be done fast enough to be used in a virtual environment using the conventional systems