3D modeling of branching structures for anatomical instruction

Abstract

Branching tubular structures are prevalent in many different organic and synthetic settings. From trees and vegetation in nature, to vascular structures throughout human and animal biology, these structures are always candidates for new methods of graphical and visual expression. We present a modeling tool for the creation and interactive modification of these structures. Parameters such as thickness and position of branching structures can be modified, while geometric constraints ensure that the resulting mesh will have an accurate anatomical structure by not having inconsistent geometry. We apply this method to the creation of accurate representations of the different types of retinal cells in the human eye. This method allows a user to quickly produce anatomically accurate structures with low polygon counts that are suitable for rendering at interactive rates on commodity computers and mobile devices.

GeoMaTree : Geometric and Mathematical Model Based Digital Tree Authoring System

“…There are studies that express smooth branch in curved structure [5] and define interaction between plant growth and environment or design modeling language by using the L-system [6] Different from grammars, there are studies on modeling based on the analysis of geometric structure of trees [7] or on self-organizing methods that analyze botanical factors composing plants and reflect them in the growth [2,8]. There have been studies that attempted applying a botanical approach to the fate of a bud such as environmental and physical factors that affect the growth of plant [9] or that considered hormonal impact on growth [10][11][12]. Most of these methods have complicated rules in the procedural modeling method and either sometimes have too many parameters to control or their tree model process is not user-friendly due to unintuitive structure.…”

An Automated Parametric Surface Patch-Based Construction Method for Smooth Lattice Structures with Irregular Topologies

“…Several methods to construct smooth lattice structures can be found in the literature, including polygon mesh methods [11,13,14], iso-surface methods [10,15,16], and surface patch methods [12,17]. Their key properties are summarised in Table 1.…”

“…Their commonality is the construction of the lattice structures surface instead of a solid object. In [11,13,14], lattice structures are described with polygon meshes. Starting with simple mesh models, subdivision schemes are applied to refine the mesh, leading to smooth strut intersections.…”

From Multiview Image Curves to 3D Drawings

“…The ultimate goal of this approach is to integrate the 3D curve drawing with the traditional recovery of surfaces so that 3D curves bound the 3D curve segments, towards a more semantic representation of 3D structures. The 3D curve drawing can also be of independent value in applications such as fast recognition of general 3D scenery [23], efficient transmission of general 3D scenes, scene understanding and modeling by reasoning at junctions [22], consistent non-photorealistic rendering from video [5], modeling of branching structures, among others [24,18,30].…”