plugin for estimating surface area of 3D object in binary image volume (stack)?

[Yu, James CL]

Hi ImageJ group,

Could anyone give me some hint if there is a plugin that can calculate
the surface area of a 3D object?

Say, I have extracted the brain from a head, and then I set brain to 255
and the rest to 0 for form a binary image volume.  I would like to know
the brain surface area from this image.  Is there a plugin for this
purpose?   If not, any relevant papers?

Thanks in advance,

James

[Albert Cardona]

> Could anyone give me some hint if there is a plugin that can calculate
> the surface area of a 3D object?


Use marching cubes, get the triangles, sum their area. It will be an
approximation, but a rather good one.

You can use the ImageJ_3D_Viewer.jar to get the skin. Then either query
it with a java plugin to get the triangles from the Contents, or export
to DXF or Wavefront (the latter is easier) and compute it with a small
python script or something.

I will add the surface triangles sum to the ImageJ_3D_Viewer.jar soon.

Albert

--
Albert Cardona
http://www.mcdb.ucla.edu/Research/Hartenstein/acardona