3D volume extraction and mesh generation using energy minimization techniques

In order to automatically extract an arbitrary 3D region from 3D image data (volume data), we have developed a physics-based approach using a 3D deformable grid model, which we called "3D Active Grid". 3D Active Grid is an extension of 3D deformable surface models, such as "balloon", and "3D Active Net". Unlike 3D deformable surface models, the proposed method enables stable extraction of a 3D region by using both boundary and interior information. Moreover, since the generated geometry data can be input directly into the FEM (finite element method), the 3D Active Grid has many potential applications including virtual simulation of surgery, shape modeling, computer vision, and so on.