Computational Visualization Center

A cross-disciplinary effort to develop and improve the technologies for computational modeling, simulation, analysis, and visualization.

Virtual Human Body Walkthrough

The goal of this project is to create a synthetic environment where a user can walk through the human body, examine the details of the body parts, and query information about them. In addition to conventional query by name or index, we emphasize on fast spatial query, and fast query by joints. We attempt to create a 3D geometric model of the human body structure based on slice data and contour data, support cross-referencing between these different representations, and support queries based on different representations. The spatial queries will retrieve the spatial, physical, and metric information about an geometric object. We also attempt to create and test functional models based on the geometry and topology of the objects. Joints are another kinds of access paths to the objects connected to them. The joint structure helps simulate the kinematics of the objects. To achieve these goals, we need to apply effective modeling, reconstruction and visualization techniques. Since the spatial database can be quite large, efficient storage management techniques are also explored.

In building the synthetic environment, we first experience with the skeleton of the human body. Following are two examples of the objects in the database. Here is a list of bones in the hierarchical structure of the skeleton.

Major Issues

Anatomical Database

  • Skeletal, Tissue, Vascular
  • Multiple Modality Data
    • Image slices
    • Iso-contours
    • Polygonal objects
    • Multiple levels of details
      • Mesh decimation
      • Wavelet transform
  • Data Organization of the Skeletal Model

Model Creation and Manipulation

  • Image slice acquiring
  • Iso-contours generation
  • Reconstruction from slices
  • Finite element models

Spatial Search Structures

  • Spatial query

Interrogative Visualization

  • Metrics query

Simulation and Collision Detection

  • Joint modeling and kinematics

Collaborative Interfaces

Papers for the Visible Human Project Conference, 1996

C. Bajaj, F. Bernardini, E. Sacks, D. Schikore and K. Lin. Physical simulation of the visible human joints.
Proc. of the Visible Human Project Conference, Natl. Library of Medicine, Washington D.C., Oct. 1996.

C. Bajaj, F. Bernardini, V. Pascucci and D. Schikore.
Interrogative visualization of the visible human datasets.
Proc. of the Visible Human Project Conference, Natl. Library of Medicine, Washington D.C., Oct. 1996.

Papers

C. Bajaj, E. Coyle, K. Lin
"Arbitrary Topology Shape Reconstruction from Planar Cross Sections''
Full version submitted for publication in Graphical Models and Image Processing (1996),
Fourth SIAM Conference on Geometric Design, Nashville, Tennesse (Nov. 1995) (pdf)

C. Bajaj, F. Bernardini, E. Sacks, D. Schikore and K. Lin.
"Physical simulation of the visible human joints."
Proceedings of the Visible Human Project Conference, Natl. Library of Medicine, Washington D.C., Oct. 1996.

C. Bajaj, F. Bernardini, V. Pascucci and D. Schikore.
"Interrogative visualization of the visible human datasets."
Proceedings of the Visible Human Project Conference, Natl. Library of Medicine, Washington D.C., Oct. 1996.

Some Examples of the Model

  • Skeleton
  • Hand
  • Skeletal hierarchy
  • SGI movie of the skeleton