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This book describes a project carried out at the University of Mannheim. It aimes at developing a graphics hardware that allows to render large volumetric data sets in real-time. The graphics system is called VIRIM. It accelerates volume rendering algorithms that are very suited to three-dimensional data set e. g. from medicine that are obtained by computer tomography, magnetic resonance or ultrasound. Volume rendering simulates the interaction of light with matter whereby each volume element of the data set is assigned physical properties like opacity and color. The VIRIM system consists of two units, a parallel pipeline processor that realizes all geometric operations like resampling and gradient estimation. The second unit performs shading and the integration of reflected light on a multiprocessorsystem based on digital signal processors. VIRIM is the first system worldwide that allows real-time rendering with volume rendering.