🚀 go-pugleaf

  I am looking for some help.  I am working in the Peter Sterling
Retina Laboratory on the University of Pennsylvania Campus.  Our group
takes serial slices of the retina which consist of digitized points.
These points on the planar contours are then used by a triangular mesh
algorithm to reconstruct the entire neuron in three space.  The
problem is that some slices do not line up correctly.  Also, slices 
do not contain the same number of digitized points.  Therefore, the 
triangular mesh algorithm will incorrectly construct the
three-dimensional neuron.  In fact, the reconstructed neuron looks 
twisted.  I would like to know if some smoothing algorithm exists 
to remove the striated appearance of the newly constructed neuron.

  Volume 11 of the ACM Transactions on Graphics (July 1992) has an
article entitled "Surfaces from Contours" by David Meyers and Shelley
Skinner of the University of Washington and Ken Sloan of the
University of Alabama at Birmingham that pretty much describes what we
are doing.  On page 255 the group mentions that an optimal surface
fitter would involve a fitter which produces a stream of Bezier
patches from the input mesh, a tessellator which samples Bezier
patches and produces a number of planar triangles that approximate
each surface patch, a colorer, and a renderer which takes the final
triangles produced by the colorer and produces a final image.

  I am trying to contact the group to find out more about what they have
done.  I would like to know if anyone out there in graphics land knows
of any other work that has been done on surface fitting or smoothing
algorithms specifically for triangular mesh 3-D reconstruction.  I
would also like to know if anyone has used the Meyers, Skinner, and
Sloan method at all involving Bezier patches.

  Please, the smallest lead is greatly appreciated.  Please contact me
via e-mail at roberts@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.  Thank you for your time
and your help.  Shawn Roberts





--
Shawn A. Roberts (roberts@eniac.seas.upenn.edu) | "...I was lined up
University of Pennsylvania CSE '93              |  for glory, but the
Dining Philosophers Computer Science Group VP   |  tickets sold out in
ACACIA International Fraternity Brother         |  advance..." -Neil Peart