SQL.CT: Providing Data Management for Visual Exploration of CT Datasets

We present the design and implementation of SQL.CT, a prototype for managing, querying, and visualizing 3D CT (Computed Tomography) datasets. The system is motivated by scientific studies of fossil records. Our prototype is built on top of SQL Server 2005 and uses both web service and service broker technologies. The desktop client utilizes commodity graphics cards to interactively render 3D volumes. This paper presents the user requirements, discusses the design of the data model and desktop client, and reports on preliminary performance measurements. Our experiments show that by pushing the spatial logic as low as possible into the DBMS, we can filter the data early. We observe some significant performance benefits from the reduced message traffic to and from the remote client.