Curve Skeletons of Planar Domains

Abstract

CAD has been traditionally used to assist in engineering design and modeling for representation, analysis and manufacturing. Advances in Information Technology and in Biomedicine have created new uses for CAD with many novel and important biomedical applications. Such applications can be found, for example, in the design and modeling of orthopedics, medical implants, and tissue modeling in which CAD can be used to describe the morphology, heterogeneity, and organizational structure of tissue and anatomy. CAD has also played an important role in computer-aided tissue engineering for biomimetic design, analysis, simulation and freeform fabrication of tissue scaffolds and substitutes. This special issue selected 6 referred papers as an introduction to recent technical advances, research and developments, and novel applications on using CAD modeling, design, analysis, and freeform fabrication for biomedical and tissue engineering.A biomodeling approach to compute accurate contours from non-invasive medical imaging data using B-spline curve approximation was introduced in the first paper. The approach and the visualization were conducted primarily based on the voxel and facet (triangle) based model representation. The NURBS, the de facto standard to represent geometry in CAD systems, was used in the reported work to perform a critical task for bio-fabrication of human bone and head. The modeling accuracy and shape fidelity were commented in the report.