Semi-regular mesh extraction from volumes

Abstract

We present a novel method to extract iso-surfaces from distance volumes. It generates high quality semi-regular multiresolution meshes of arbitrary topology. Our technique proceeds in two stages. First, a very coarse mesh with guaranteed topology is extracted. Subsequently an iterative multi-scale force-based solver refines the initial mesh into a semi-regular mesh with geometrically adaptive sampling rate and good aspect ratio triangles. The coarse mesh extraction is performed using a new approach we call surface wavefront propagation. A set of discrete iso-distance ribbons are rapidly built and connected while respecting the topology of the iso-surface implied by the data. Subsequent multi-scale refinement is driven by a simple force-based solver designed to combine good iso-surface fit and high quality sampling through reparameterization. In contrast to the Marching Cubes technique our output meshes adapt gracefully to the iso-surface geometry, have a natural multiresolution structure and good aspect ratio triangles, as demonstrated with a number of examples.

3D finite element meshing from imaging data

“…Progressive multiresolution representation and recursive subdivision are combined effectively, and isosurfaces are constructed and smoothed by applying the edge bisection method [45]. A surface wave-front propagation technique [65] is used to generate multiresolution meshes with good aspect ratio.…”

Physiopathology of Pulmonary Airways: Automated Facilities for Accurate Assessment

“…While the first two requirements find a solution with the central axis computation, the third one raises several difficulties related to the high branching complexity and to the caliber variability of the airway structure. The existing algorithms performing the extraction of an object surface mesh from volumetric data can be classified into the following categories: planar contour-based methods [3], deformable models [4,5], and the "Marching Cubes" (MC) algorithm [6,7]. Widely used in medical imaging [8], the MC are better adapted to the bronchial tree structure.…”

Fast extraction of adaptive multiresolution meshes with guaranteed properties from volumetric data

“…A base mesh that captures the topology of the object of interest is first created, followed by the subdivision and deformation of the base mesh in order to produce the final adaptive, multiresolution mesh. Wood et al [25] improve upon this approach with a method that guarantees that the final mesh has the correct topology and has subdivision connectivity. Others [21,2,16] have developed deformable models for extracting surfaces from volume data, but have not presented information about the properties of their resulting meshes.…”

“…A surfel is a surface patch formed by the intersection of the implicit iso-surface with a voxel as defined in [25]. The intersection of a surfel with a voxel edge is called a node.…”

“…The graph completely encodes the topology of the iso-surface. It is similar to the graphs used in [25], except the edges are weighted with real distance information, instead of setting all the edge lengths to 1.…”