Skip to main content

Efficient Delaunay Mesh Generation from Sampled Scalar Functions

  • Conference paper
Proceedings of the 16th International Meshing Roundtable

Abstract

Many modern research areas face the challenge of meshing level sets of sampled scalar functions. While many algorithms focus on ensuring geometric qualities of the output mesh, recent attention has been paid to building topologically accurate Delaunay conforming meshes of any level set from such volumetric data.

In this paper, we present an algorithm which constructs a surface mesh homeomorphic to the true level set of the sampled scalar function. The presented algorithm also produces a tetrahedral volumetric mesh of good quality, both interior and exterior to the level set. The meshing scheme presented substantially improves over the existing algorithms in terms of efficiency. Finally, we show that when the unknown sampled scalar function, for which the level set is to be meshed, is approximated by a specific class of interpolant, the algorithm can be simplified by taking into account the nature of the interpolation scheme so as to circumvent some of the critical computations which tend to produce numerical instability.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. P. Alliez, D. Cohen-Steiner, M. Yvinec, and M. Desbrun. Variational tetrahedral meshing. In SIGGRAPH 2005, pages 617–625, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  2. D. Attali and J.-O. Lachaud. Delaunay conforming iso-surface, skeleton extraction and noise removal. Comp. Geom.: Theory and Appl., 19:175–189, 2001.

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. C. Bajaj, J. Chen, and G. Xu. Modeling with cubic A-patches. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 14(2):103–133, 1995.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. C. Bajaj, A. Gillette, and S. Goswami. Topology based selection and curation of level sets. In TopoInVis 2007, Accepted.

    Google Scholar 

  5. C. Bajaj and S. Goswami. Automatic fold and structural motif elucidation from 3d em maps of macromolecules. In ICVGIP 2006, pages 264–275, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  6. C. Bajaj, G. Xu, and Q. Zhang. Smooth surface constructions via a higher-order level-set method. In Proc. of CAD/Graphics 2007, Accepted.

    Google Scholar 

  7. H. M. Berman, J. Westbrook, Z. Feng, G. Gilliland, T. Bhat, H. Weissig, I. Shindyalov, and P. Bourne. The Protein Data Bank. Nucleic Acids Research, pages 235–242, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  8. CGAL Consortium. CGAL: Computational Geometry Algorithms Library. http://www.cgal.org.

    Google Scholar 

  9. S.-W. Cheng, T. Dey, E. Ramos, and T. Ray. Sampling and meshing a surface with guaranteed topology and geometry. SCG ’04: Proc. of the 20th Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry, pages 280–289, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  10. S.-W. Cheng, T. K. Dey, and E. A. Ramos. Delaunay refinement for piecewise smooth complexes. In SODA, pages 1096–1105, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  11. E. Chernyaev. Marching cubes 33: Construction of topologically correct isosurfaces. Technical Report. CERN CN/95-17, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  12. L. Chew. Guaranteed-quality mesh generation for curved surfaces. In Proc. SoCG ’93, pages 274–280, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  13. M. de Berg, M. van Kreveld, M. Overmars, and O. Schwarzkopf. Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1997.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. T. Dey and J. Levine. Delaunay meshing of isosurfaces. In Proc. Shape Modeling International [to appear], 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  15. H. Edelsbrunner and N. Shah. Triangulating topological spaces. Intl. Journal of Comput. Geom. and Appl., 7:365–378, 1997.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. V. Guillemin and A. Pollack. Differential Topology. Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1974.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. I. Guskov, A. Khodakovsky, P. Schroder, and W. Sweldens. Hybrid meshes: multiresolution using regular and irregular refinement. In SCG ’02: Proc. of the 18th Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry, pages 264–272, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  18. K. Hormann, U. Labsik, M. Meister, and G. Greiner. Hierarchical extraction of iso-surfaces with semi-regular meshes. In SMA ’02: Proc. of 7th ACM Symposium on Solid Modeling and Applications, pages 53–58, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  19. F. Labelle and J. Shewchuk. Isosurface stuffing: Fast tetrahedral meshes with good dihedral angles. In SIGGRAPH (to appear), 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  20. J.-O. Lachaud. Topologically defined iso-surfaces. In DCGA ’96: Proc. 6th Intl. Workshop on Discr. Geom. for Comp. Imagery, pages 245–256, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  21. A. Lopes and K. Brodlie. Improving the robustness and accuracy of the marching cubes algorithm for isosurfacing. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, volume 9, pages 16–29, 2003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. W. Lorensen and H. Cline. Marching cubes: A high resolution 3d surface construction algorithm. In ACM SIGGRAPH ’87, pages 163–169, 1987.

    Google Scholar 

  23. B. K. Natarajan. On generating topologically consistent isosurfaces from uniform samples. The Visual Computer, 11:52–62, 1994.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. S. Oudot, L. Rineau, and M. Yvinec. Meshing volumes bounded by smooth surfaces. In Proc. 14th Intl. Meshing Roundtable, pages 203–219, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  25. G. D. Reis, B. Mourrain, R. Rouillier, and P. Tr’ebuchet. An environment for symbolic and numeric computation. In Proc. Internat. Conf. on Mathematical Software, pages 239–249, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Z. Wood, H. Hoppe, M. Desbrun, and P. Schroder. Removing excess topology from isosurfaces. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 23(2):190–208, April 2004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Z. Wood, P. Schroder, D. Breen, and M. Desbrun. Semi-regular mesh extraction from volumes. In VIS ’00: Proc. of the Conference on Visualization 2000, pages 275–282. IEEE Computer Society Press, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Y. Zhang, C. Bajaj, and B.-S. Sohn. Adaptive and quality 3d meshing from imaging data. In Proc. of 8th ACM Symposium on Solid Modeling and Applications, pages 286–291, June 2003.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Goswami, S., Gillette, A., Bajaj, C. (2008). Efficient Delaunay Mesh Generation from Sampled Scalar Functions. In: Brewer, M.L., Marcum, D. (eds) Proceedings of the 16th International Meshing Roundtable. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75103-8_28

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75103-8_28

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-75102-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-75103-8

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics