CONSTRUCTION OF A 3-D FINITE ELEMENT MODEL OF THE HUMAN FOREARM COMPLEX USING A SERIES OF 2-D COLOR IMAGES

A simple yet efficient paradigm for geometric mesh generation using the Visible Human Project Male dataset for further finite element analysis was presented. The minimum distance classifier was used for the discriminant function between the class centers classified by the fuzzy c-means clustering method in the RGB space. Furthermore, based on two major geometric assumptions on the boundary curves, star-shaped polygon and geometric conformity, a points-on-line search technique was devised for efficient computation of the boundary points of the contours for each anatomical component of the human forearm complex. The computed boundary points in each slice were fitted to a closed spline curve and resampled and then refitted for correct alignment with the consecutive boundary curves in order to improve geometric fidelity. By using the refitted contours, a 3-D geometric model of the human radius, ulna, and surrounding soft tissue was generated in a commercial computer–aided design system and exported to a commercial finite element analysis package for meshing with its built-in automatic mesh generator. The proposed method can be applied to geometric mesh generation of other long bones, which allows easy handling, storage, and exchange of the model.