title: Mesh quality oriented 3D geometric vascular modeling based on parallel transport frame.
abstract: While a number of methods have been proposed to reconstruct geometrically and topologically accurate 3D vascular models from medical images, little attention has been paid to constantly maintain high mesh quality of these models during the reconstruction procedure, which is essential for many subsequent applications such as simulation-based surgical training and planning. We propose a set of methods to bridge this gap based on parallel transport frame. An improved bifurcation modeling method and two novel trifurcation modeling methods are developed based on 3D Bézier curve segments in order to ensure the continuous surface transition at furcations. In addition, a frame blending scheme is implemented to solve the twisting problem caused by frame mismatch of two successive furcations. A curvature based adaptive sampling scheme combined with a mesh quality guided frame tilting algorithm is developed to construct an evenly distributed, non-concave and self-intersection free surface mesh for vessels with distinct radius and high curvature. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our methodology can generate vascular models with better mesh quality than previous methods in terms of surface mesh quality criteria.
authors.affiliation: College of Computer Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, Sichuan, China. guojixiang@gmail.com
authors.forename: Jixiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Shun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yim Pan
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Chui
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Pheng Ann
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Heng
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000792:Angiography; D003196:Computer Graphics; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D002532:Intracranial Aneurysm / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed