Combining a morphological interpolation approach with a surface reconstruction method for the 3-D representation of tomographic data

In this paper, a new interpolation scheme, based on Mathematical Morphology and a modified Marching Cubes (MC) Algorithm to reconstruct 3-D anatomical structures is presented. The proposed interpolation technique is implemented using morphological operations and incorporates a distance function to improve the computational effectiveness of the technique. The morphological interpolation technique is compared to an existing shape based interpolation method and its advantages include superiority capability on handling various cases such as the branching and holes problem (appearance and disappearance of information) and more accurate volume estimation. Furthermore, the morphological technique is companied with a 3-D reconstruction algorithm capable of representing any anatomical structure from real 3-D medical data. Introducing a novel general rule.. the algorithm triangulates all standard cube configurations introduced from the standard MC algorithm, without producing topologically incoherent surfaces or holes. Finally, the technique is implemented in JAVA and its output is in VRML 1.0 format; therefore it can be executed over the internet and implemented for telemedicine applications. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.