Construction of volume meshes from computed tomography data

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Computational Science
• Mesh Generation

Background:

• Generating accurate volume meshes from medical imaging data is crucial for simulations.
• Existing surface generation algorithms like Marching Cubes (MC) are not directly applicable for volume meshing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a new algorithm, Marching Volume Elements (MVE), for automatic volume mesh generation.
• To create volume meshes from 3-D computed tomography (CT) data suitable for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

Main Methods:

• The Marching Volume Elements (MVE) algorithm is developed, building upon the Marching Cubes (MC) algorithm.
• The MVE algorithm constructs topologically consistent volumes using pyramids, cubes, and tetrahedrons with shared faces.

Main Results:

• The MVE algorithm successfully generates volume meshes from 3-D CT data.
• Validation was performed on a synthetic object and a human nasal cavity CT scan.

Conclusions:

• The MVE algorithm provides an effective method for automatic volume mesh generation from high-resolution CT data.
• The generated meshes are suitable for downstream CFD simulations, enabling advanced analysis.