Reaction: Marching Cubes - A High Resolution 3D Surface Construction Algorithm

This paper discuss about a new 3D surface contruction algorithm called marching cubes, significant in examining 3D medical data or anatomy. Author justify the need of this alogrithm by explaining the diffrence in interepretation mechanism of a physician and radiologist.Data acquired in form of 2D slices from techniqus like CT,MR and SPECT, serve as an input to this algorithm.Reason behind failure of early 3d surface construction techniques(eg inter-slice connectivity,cuberilee, ray casting, volume models) was their inablity of holding back useful information in original data. Keeping that in mind, marching alogrithm carefully derives inter-splice connectivity, surface location and gradient vector from original 3D data. Algorithm is primarily divided into two parts:-1) locating surface cordinates 2) creating triangles.It uses combination of techniques like divide and conquer, linear interpolation, indexing and Permutation to locate and calculate triangle vertices and vertex normals.Coherence,which promotes pre-calculation and boolean operations that enable solid modelling are definately significant advancements over existing algorithm. Author explains the practical application of this alogrithm wit the help os case studies on data gathered using CT, MA and SPECT.i believe dividing cubes would be equally intutive. Overall its an interesting read.