title: Topology-graph directed separating boundary surfaces approximation of nonmanifold neuroanatomical structures: application to mouse brain olfactory bulb.
abstract: Boundary surface approximation of 3-D neuroanatomical regions from sparse 2-D images (e.g., mouse brain olfactory bulb structures from a 2-D brain atlas) has proven to be difficult due to the presence of abutting, shared boundary surfaces that are not handled by traditional boundary-representation data structures and surfaces-from-contours algorithms. We describe a data structure and an algorithm to reconstruct separating surfaces among multiple regions from sparse cross-sectional contours. We define a topology graph for each region, that describes the topological skeleton of the region's boundary surface and that shows between which contours the surface patches should be generated. We provide a graph-directed triangulation algorithm to reconstruct surface patches between contours. We combine our graph-directed triangulation algorithm together with a piecewise parametric curve fitting technique to ensure that abutting or shared surface patches are precisely coincident. We show that our method overcomes limitations in 1) traditional contours-from-surfaces algorithms that assume binary, not multiple, regionalization of space, and in 2) few existing separating surfaces algorithms that assume conversion of input into a regular volumetric grid, which is not possible with sparse interplanar resolution.
authors.affiliation: Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030 USA. wkoh1@gmu.edu
authors.forename: Wonryull
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Koh
authors.forename: Bruce H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: McCormick
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009830:Olfactory Bulb / Q000033:anatomy & histology*