Border marriage: matching of contours of serial sections

Surface triangulation methods are often used to reconstruct biomedical objects from serial tomographs. The contours extracted from such images must be matched prior to surface tiling. Previously, researchers used relatively simple objects with trivial matching conditions, or used a priori knowledge, or matched the contours manually. This paper describes a new method for matching contours based on topological considerations. This method can automatically tile complex objects; particular attention is placed on objects with hollow interiors. The method also detects complex hole bifurcations and generates appropriate saddle points. Applied to biomedical modelling, this method can match complex contours with a high degree of accuracy.<>