[Insight-users] Polygonization algorithms, Marching Triangles

[Harvey Cline]

Hi Dan

This sounds like an excellent project that may use the efficient
implementation  vtkMarchingCubesImageFilter for comparison and other
Delauney VTK tools to construct the marching triangles algorithm. If
you find open source code it would be great if it could be contributed
to VTK.

thank you
Harvey Cline

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Dan Mueller <dan.muel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Insight-users,
>
> Our group is interested in comparing polygonziation algorithms. By
> polygonization I mean algorithms which convert an implicit surface
> embedded in a scalar volume to a mesh. We are specifically interested
> in so-called "adaptive" algorithms, which produce a mesh consisting of
> variable-size polygons based on some criteria (such as curvature).
>
> Obviously ITK already includes the Marching Cubes [1] algorithm within
> Algorithms/itkBinaryMask3DMeshSource. Together with
> Review/itkQuadEdgeMeshDecimationFilter I understand it is possible to
> generate adaptive polygonizations. But surely it would be more
> efficient/faster to go straight from the volume to an adaptive mesh,
> without the intermediate decimation step?
>
> Anyhow, to investigate such matters we obviously need to
> source/implement other polygonization algorithms. The first algorithm
> we wish to focus on is Marching Triangles [2] (or at least one of its
> more recent/improved derivations [3]).
>
> Question 1: Is there an existing ITK Marching Triangles implementation
> out there? From my understanding there is not one in the existing code
> archive, or submitted to the Insight Journal. Perhaps there is one
> hidden in the NAMIC Sandbox? Or some discarded student project
> collecting the digital equivalent of dust on someone's hard drive?
>
> Question 2: I am surprised Marching Triangles has not been previously
> included in the toolkit. Is this because of lack of
> time/motivation/interest? Or perhaps some other more frustrating
> issue, such as "intellectual property" (ie. patent)? I did a cursory
> patent search, but did not turn up anything...
>
> Thanks for any advice/pointers.
>
> Cheers, Dan
>
> [1] Lorensen and Cline, Marching cubes: A high resolution 3D surface
> construction algorithm, Proceedings of the 14th annual conference on
> Computer graphics and interactive techniques, pp 163 - 169, 1987
>
> [2] Hilton, Stoddart, Illingworth and Windeatt, Marching triangles:
> range image fusion for complex object modelling, Proceedings.of the
> International Conference on Image Processing, pp. 381-384, 1996
> http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/A.Hilton/research/mt/hilton-mt-97.pdf
>
> [3] Akkouche andc Galin, Adaptive Implicit Surface Polygonization
> Using Marching Triangles, Computer Graphics Forum Volume 20 Issue 2,
> pp. 67-80, 2002
> http://www.ann.jussieu.fr/~frey/papers/scivi/Akkouche%20S.,%20Adaptive%20implicit%20surface%20polygonization%20using%20marching%20triangles.pdf
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