A 3D tube-object centerline extraction algorithm based on steady fluid dynamics

Abstract

Three-dimensional tubular objects are widely used in the fields of industrial design, medical simulation, virtual reality and so on. Because of the complex tubular structure with bifurcation, irregular surface and uneven distribution of inner diameter, creating the centerlines of tubular objects is accurately a challenge work. In this paper, we propose a novel two-stage algorithm for efficient and accurate centerline extraction based on steady fluid dynamics. Firstly, the liquid pressure cloud data is obtained by Finite Volume Method (FVM) to simulate Newtonian fluid in the inner space of 3D tube. And the Delaunay Tetrahedralization and the Marching Tetrahedra Method are used to extract isobaric surfaces. Secondly, the selected center points of these isosurfaces are orderly organized for constructing the centerline directed tree, from which the final continuous, smooth centerline is automatically generated by Catmull-Rom spline. The experimental results show that our approach is feasible for extracting the centerlines of tubular objects with high accuracy and less manual interventions, especially has good robustness on complex tubular structures.