A new surface interpolation technique for reconstructing 3D objects from serial cross-sections

A new method for automatically reconstructing a 3-dimensional object from serial cross sections is presented in this paper. The method combines the techniques of dynamic elastic contour interpolation, spline theory, and quadratic variation-based surface interpolation. In the proposed method, the initial description of the object is formed by applying the elastic interpolation algorithm to generate a series of intermediate contours between each pair of consecutive cross sections. After this, a preliminary processing for surface computation is carried out by mapping the contours into the domain of surface function and then using spline functions to calculate the initial surface values. Based on the output from preliminary processing, we apply the quadratic variation-based surface interpolation algorithm to calculate the final surface representation. Since our method takes the continuity of high order derivatives into consideration, smooth and complete surfaces of a 3D object can thus be reconstructed.