title: Fitting manifold surfaces to three-dimensional point clouds.
abstract: We present a technique for fitting a smooth, locally parameterized surface model (called the manifold surface model) to unevenly scattered data describing an anatomical structure. These data are acquired from medical imaging modalities such as CT scans or MRI. The manifold surface is useful for problems which require analyzable or parametric surfaces fitted to data acquired from surfaces of arbitrary topology (e.g., entire bones). This surface modeling work is part of a larger project to model and analyze skeletal joints, in particular the complex of small bones within the wrist and hand. To demonstrate the suitability of this model we fit to several different bones in the hand, and to the same bone from multiple people.
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. cmg@cs.wustl.edu
authors.forename: Cindy M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Grimm
authors.forename: Joseph J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Crisco
authors.forename: David H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Laidlaw
mesh_terms: D002348:Carpal Bones / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D016014:Linear Models; D015233:Models, Statistical; D013269:Stochastic Processes