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Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of reconstructing the 3D structure of
planetary nebulae from 2D observations. Assuming axial symmetry, our method
jointly reconstructs the distribution of dust and ionized gas in the nebulae
from observations at two different wavelengths. In an inverse rendering
framework we optimize for the emission and absorption densities which are
correlated to the gas and dust distribution present in the nebulae. First, the
density distribution of the dust component is estimated based on an infrared
image, which traces only the dust distribution due to its intrinsic
temperature. In a second step, we optimize for the gas distribution by
comparing the rendering of the nebula to the visible wavelength image. During
this step, besides the emission of the ionized gas, we further include the
effect of absorption and scattering due to the already estimated dust
distribution. Using the same approach, we can as well start with a radio image
from which the gas distribution is derived without absorption, then deriving
the dust distribution from the visible wavelength image considering absorption
and scattering. The intermediate steps and the final reconstruction results are
visualized at real-time frame rates using a volume renderer. Using our method
we recover both gas and dust density distributions present in the nebula by
exploiting the distinct absorption or emission parameters at different
wavelengths.