Adaptive Mesh Generation of MRI Images for 3D Reconstruction of Human Trunk

This paper presents an adaptive mesh generation method from a series of transversal MR images. The adaptation process is based on the construction of a metric from the gray levels of an image. The metric is constrained by four parameters which are the minimum and maximum Euclidian length of an edge, the maximum stretching of the metric and the target edge length in the metric. The initial mesh is a regular triangulation of an MR image. This initial mesh is adapted according to the metric by choosing appropriate values for the previous set of parameters. The proposed approach provides an anisotropic mesh for which the elements are clustered near the boundaries. The experimental results show that the element’s edges of the obtained mesh are aligned with the boundaries of anatomical structures identified on the MR images. Furthermore, this mesh has approximately 80% less vertices than the mesh before adaptation with vertices mainly located in the regions of interest.