Horizon, closing the gap between cinematic visualization and medical imaging

Medical imaging has become a fascinating field with detailed visualizations of the body’s internal environments. Although the field has grown fast and is sensitive to new technologies, it does not use the latest rendering techniques available in other domains, such as day-to-day movie production or game development. In this work, we bring forward Horizon, a new engine that provides cinematic rendering capabilities in real-time for quality controlling medical data. In addition, Horizon is provided as free, open-source software to be used as a foundation stone for building the next generation of medical imaging applications. In this introductory paper, we focus on the extensive development of advanced shaders, which can be used to highlight untapped features of the data and allow fast interaction with machine learning algorithms. In addition, Horizon provides physically-based rendering capabilities, the epitome of advanced visualization, adapted for the needs of medical imaging analysis practices.