I'd like to understand visualising volumetric intensity data in 3D

Question

As a side project I'd like to experiment with visualising volumetric intensity data in 3D. I work with light microscopy data and have image stacks with defined dimensions, usually 512x512 pixels up to 2048x2048 pixels on a plane, with a variable number of z-sections in the order of 30 to 100 or so. Normally the data are 12-bit integers, but can be 8-bit and more recently 16-bit.

Essentially, my question is: what do I need to know to translate these volumes to something that can be rendered in 3D?

My searching and reading so far always points towards examples for displaying CT data or file types for 3D printing, but my experience of these is zero, so it doesn't really help. I have no intention of re-inventing the wheel and I'm happy to use existing tools. My environment is Python 3.6 because of the source of the data.

I tried using Ospray as an engine and Ospray-Python wrapper, and had some success with feeding it data to get an output, but the image was just a white plane. I then tried K3D in a jupyter environment and managed to produce 3D output, but floating circles in a volume don't really represent the intensity image. My problem is I don't know how to troubleshoot the vast range of parameters involved.

I lack the parlance of 3D visualisation, so I'm going in loops trying to get useful information. Can someone point me to resources that will help make this conceptual link from a 3D array of intensities to 'objects' in an interactive volume?

Thanks.