A Mesh-Aware Ball-Pivoting Algorithm for Generating the Virtual Arachnoid Mater

Abstract

We introduce the Mesh-Aware Ball-Pivoting Algorithm (MABPA), which generates a concave hull triangle mesh, taking one or more oriented, manifold triangle surfaces as input. All vertices of the concave hull mesh output consist of some of the vertices of the input meshes, and the output includes outmost triangle polygons from the input meshes. The MABPA was developed for synthesizing the virtual arachnoid mater around the brain, but is also useful for computationally generating a virtual membrane mesh around any internal organ in general. The arachnoid mater by the MABPA is useful for deformable brain simulation such as a virtual cerebral aneurysm clipping surgery, because collision detection between the membrane and the brain is basically unnecessary. They seldom intersect with each other, because each vertex of the membrane is associated with a vertex from the input.