A B S T R A C TWe present an affine-invariant non-stationary subdivision scheme for the recursive refinement of any triangular mesh that is regular or has extraordinary vertices of valence 4. In particular, when applied to an arbitrary convex octahedron, it produces a G 1 -continuous surface with a blob-like shape as the limit of the recursive subdivision process. In case of a regular octahedron, the subdivision process provides an accurate representation of ellipsoids. Our scheme allows us to easily construct a new interactive 3D deformable model for use in the delineation of biomedical images, which we illustrate by examples that deal with the characterization of 3D structures with sphere-like topology such as embryos, nuclei, or brains.

An ongoing issue in vascular medicine is the measure of the blood flow. Catheterization remains the gold standard measurement method, although non-invasive techniques are an area of intense research. We hereby present a computational method for real-time measurement of the blood flow from color flow Doppler data, with a focus on simplicity and monitoring instead of diagnostics. We then analyze the performance of a proof-of-principle software implementation. We imagined a geometrical model geared towards blood flow computation from a color flow Doppler signal, and we developed a software implementation requiring only a standard diagnostic ultrasound device. Detection performance was evaluated by computing flow and its determinants (flow speed, vessel area, and ultrasound beam angle of incidence) on purposely designed synthetic and phantom-based arterial flow simulations. Flow was appropriately detected in all cases. Errors on synthetic images ranged from nonexistent to substantial depending on experimental conditions. Mean errors on measurements from our phantom flow simulation ranged from 1.2 to 40.2% for angle estimation, and from 3.2 to 25.3% for real-time flow estimation. This study is a proof of concept showing that accurate measurement can be done from automated color flow Doppler signal extraction, providing the industry the opportunity for further optimization using raw ultrasound data.