The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Isosurfaces are surface meshes representing ”object” boundaries in scalar field data, such as MRI or CT data. More precisely, isosurfaces are surface meshes representing level sets {f−1(σ) : σ ∈ R}, constructed from a sampling of a function f : R → R3. Isosurface construction, particularly the classical Marching Cubes algorithm (1988), is a standard tool in scientific visualization and geometric modeling, We will discuss Marching Cubes and an alternative, Dual Contouring, isosurface construction in 4D, extending these algorithms to volume meshing (interval volumes), representing and constructing sharp features using these algorithms, and modifying these algorithms to construct good (better) quality triangle or quadrilateral meshes. Rephael Wenger is a professor in the computer science and engineering department of The Ohio State University where he works on geometric modeling, mesh generation, geometric algorithms and scientific visualization. The focus of his recent research has been on the fast generation of large geometric models (isosourfaces) from scalar data such as industrial and medical CT data, MRI data, time varying (4D) scalar data and computational fluid dynamics simulation data. He wrote a book and has authored numerous papers on isosurface generation, including papers on isosurface generation in 4D, generating 3D meshes bounded by isosurfaces (interval volumes), generating isosurfaces with guarantees on mesh quality, fractal dimensions of isosurfaces, and generating isosurfaces with sharp features.