Automatic 3D shape reconstruction of bones using active nets based segmentation

In this work a new methodology for automatic three dimensional shape reconstruction of bones from tomographic cross-sections is presented, based in the topological active net model. The methodology presented is fundamentaly composed by two steps. In the first one, with the purpose of differentiate the internal and the external contours of bony structures, the existent bones in the first image of the sequence are extracted. For this purpose, a topological analysis of the mesh is done. In the second step the 3D bones´ reconstruction is obtained by tracking the active net in the rest of slices using the information obtained in previous stages of the tracking process and introducing new energy terms based in directional filters