These examples are still not at the level what VTK’s plain volume raycast mapper can do.
For example, VTK can currently render a cardiac CT (CTA-cardio.nrrd) like this:
But instead we would like to see rendering with more realistic shadows and material appearance, like this (source: Siemens Healthcare):
It would be of course highly desirable if VTK could render such images directly, but in same cases it would be acceptable to export the scene to an external software, such as Blender, for photorealistic rendering or creating animations (with complex camera motion, lighting, etc.).
I’ll try to find time to experiment in Blender, but in the meantime it would be nice to see if anybody can make Blender render volumes with quality that surpasses VTK’s raycaster and approaches photorealistic rendering offered in commercial medical imaging software.