Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Reaction: Marching cubes: A high resolution 3D surface construction algorithm

I found the paper to be a mix of mathematical analysis combined with the power of computer graphics by taking the medical field as a base set. It was very interesting to know how CT, MR and SPECT work and what is the difference between the three of them. The authors clearly state why their algorithm is superior when compared to the ones that previously existed, this I feel is important because the reader might keep pondering about the difference between the old and algorithm presented in the paper and hence removes the confusion. I however strongly argue about the validity of the statement which the authors have made which talks about "useful information" when relating to old algorithms. I think the validity of any information can only be based on what the experiment is trying to accomplish and its set of related inputs.

Looking at the fact that the paper was published in 1987, the authors have done a fantastic job by coming up with the algorithm and a working implementation which runs the marching cubes algorithm on the data produced by the CT, MR and SPECT. I seriously wonder how advanced was the field of 3D anatomy at that time because the images shown in the results section on the paper are very impressive. Also, one more point which I would like to make on the algorithm is the amount of space complexity and the processing time it takes and whether the algorithm is still used as a basis on which research work is done today.

Overall, this is a must read paper especially for the curious who would like to know how 3D modelling was done back in those days and how efficient it was (images given in the paper show that it infact did a pretty good job!).

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