Rebuilding the visible man

Abstract

This paper describes a collection of techniques designed to create photo-realistic computer models of the National Library of Medicine's Visible Man. An image segmentation algorithm is described which segments anatomical structures independent of the variation in color contained in the anatomical structure. The generation of pseudo-radiographic images from the 24-bit digital color images is also described. Three-dimensional manifold surfaces are generated from these images with the appropriate anatomical colors assigned to each surface vertex. Finally, three separate smoothing algorithms — surface, normal, and color, are applied to the surface to create surprisingly realistic surfaces. A number of examples are presented which include solid surfaces, surface cutaways, and mixed opaque and translucent models.