Isosurface Reconstruction with Topology Control

Extracting isosurfaces from volumetric datasets is an essential step for indirect volume rendering algorithms. For physically measured data like it is used, e.g. in medical imaging applications one often introduces topological errors such as small handles that stem from measurement inaccuracy and cavities that are generated by tight folds of an organ. During isosurface extraction these measurement errors result in a surface whose genus is much higher than that of the actual surface. In many cases however, the topological type of the object under consideration is known beforehand, e.g., the cortex of a human brain is always homeomorphic to a sphere. By using topology preserving morphological operators we can exploit this knowledge to gradually dilate an initial set of voxels with correct topology until it fits the target isosurface. This approach avoids the formation of handles and cavities and guarantees a topologically correct reconstruction of the object's surface.