Semi-automatic surface and volume mesh generation for subject-specific biomedical geometries.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Computational Fluid Dynamics
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Accurate numerical modeling of biofluid flow requires high-quality computational meshes.
• Subject-specific geometries in biomedical applications present challenges for mesh generation.
• Existing methods may struggle with complex anatomical structures.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide an overview of surface and volume mesh generation techniques for biomedical flows.
• To present methods for creating valid and high-quality meshes for subject-specific geometries.
• To address challenges in modeling hemodynamics and respiratory airflow.

Main Methods:

• Generation of triangular surface meshes followed by tetrahedral volume meshes.
• Minimization of mesh distortion to preserve geometric accuracy.
• Development of semi-automatic procedures adaptable to complex anatomical data.
• Inclusion of a boundary layer meshing procedure for blood flow applications.

Main Results:

• Demonstration of techniques for generating high-quality surface and volume elements.
• Successful application to subject-specific geometries for blood flow and respiratory airflow.
• Validation of methods for robust numerical modeling of biofluid dynamics.
• Highlighting the semi-automatic nature due to geometric complexity.

Conclusions:

• The presented mesh generation techniques are effective for biomedical flow simulations.
• These methods support robust numerical modeling of hemodynamics and respiratory airflow.
• Semi-automatic approaches offer a viable solution for complex subject-specific geometries.
• Further automation may be achievable with high-quality scan data.