Comparative study of surface modeling methods for vascular structures.

Surface model of vascular structure plays a crucial role in many medical applications such as diagnosis of vascular diseases, surgery planning and virtual interventional vascular surgery. During the last two decades, many surface modeling methods for vascular structures are presented, but the performance and applicability of these methods have not been studied extensively. In this paper, a comparative study of some of the latest methods is carried out, to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these methods with regard to several evaluating criteria. Based on the comparative results, the applicability of each method for several specific applications is suggested.