The Lattice System: Memory-saving but Accurate Modeling

ALTHOUGH voxel-based images are very accurate, they are extremely memory intensive. This is not a problem for storing and viewing voxel-based images on state-of-the-art desktop computers with hard drives of 100 Gb and up, and RAM of several Gb, but these images almost always need to be shared, often with colleagues across the world. Heavy memory loads make for very slow electronic transmission, even in these days of ultra-fast broadband communication. That has been addressed by the introduction of the lattice-based imaging systems which are much less memory intensive than voxel-based images, very important when considering sending images over the World Wide Web in the virtual memory modeling language (VRML) technique.

    The Lattice System uses a much more basic technique, based on simplified polygons. These images can be almost have 3 orders of magnitude smaller memory requirements than the voxel mesh method, and are sent over the web using the extended VRML technique (XVL), whereby only the lattice is send over the web. On downloading the lattice, the original surface with which the lattice was associated is quickly, easily and accurately constructed. Please click HERE to see some examples of lattice modeling compared with conventional voxel mesh modeling. (FLASH! player required: 125 kb download)

For more detailed information on Lattice, and to download the free Lattice player and other software, click HERE. Click on the 'English' banner to see the site in English