Algorithm Design for User Experience Enhancement of Volume Dataset Reading from Storage Using 3D Binary Image as the Metadata

The paper deals with the problematics of volume datasets that can be considered as the three dimensional regular grids of scalar values or regular grids of vectors of scalar values. Volume datasets represent significant amount of data located on the secondary storage. It is possible to consider related operations as time consuming in such a measure in which they cause bad user experience. That is why we proposed algorithm that creates metadata in the form of the three dimensional binary image from volume dataset. Metadata are able to significantly reduce time of important part of the dataset loading from the secondary storage into the operating memory of computer. The paper introduces designed algorithm and two different Run-Length Encoding (RLE) methods in its first part. Evaluation of proposed algorithm along with RLE compression methods, using volume datasets obtained by different medical imaging techniques including Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), takes place in the second part of the paper.