Manufacturable surface reconstruction from complex contours

To retrieve the geometric information contained in CT images, a surface reconstruction method, which is based on the similarity between the corresponding contours of adjacent sections, is presented in this paper. The correspondence of the contours of adjacent sections is determined by incorporating the topological rules and overlaps of the convex hulls of the contours. Then, the similar vertices of the corresponding contours are matched using a two‐phase strategy, consisting of overall matching followed by local matching. Dissimilar portions are extracted to construct the triangulable spatial dissimilar polygons. Finally, triangular meshes interpolating the contours are obtained by triangulating the dissimilar polygons and similar portions separately. The reconstructed surface models can be used in rapid prototyping as well as visualization. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the method in reconstructing the surface from severe dissimilar contours.