Fast reconstruction of volumetric models of anatomical structures

This paper reports a fast and robust method for building 3D volumetric models of anatomical structures. The proposed reconstruction solution is image modality independent. As input, the method requires a set of contours obtained after organ segmentation. It is not necessary for contours to lie on parallel slices. The contours are simplified using a combination of smoothing techniques and B-splines. A 3D triangulation of the object convex hull is generated, based on a 3D Delaunay triangulation algorithm. A sculpting process of the non-object tetrahedra is performed, based on the spatial information obtained in the segmentation process. The surface, represented as a set of triangles, and the volume, represented as a set of tetrahedral, are obtained. To validate the algorithm, geometrical measurements of the generated model are computed, and compared with the original object. Currently, the method is tested on CT and MR images. At this stage, 2 seconds are needed on a standard workstation to build a skull model with approximately 120,000 tetrahedrals.