Automated solid models from serial section images.

A new method for creating unambiguous and complete boundary representation solid models with a hybrid polygonal/nonuniform rational B spline representation was developed and tested using computed tomography scans of the wrist. Polygon surface approximation was applied to a sequence of parallel planar outlines of individual bone elements in the wrist. An automated technique for the transformation of edge contours into solid models was implemented. This was performed using a custom batch file command sequence generator coupled to a commercially available mechanical computer-aided design and engineering software system known as I-DEAS (Structural Dynamics Research Corporation, Milford, OH). This transformation software allows the use of biomedical scan slice data with a solid modeler.