Dynamic Elastic Interpolation for 3-D Medical Image Reconstruction from Serial Cross Sections

In many scientific and technical endeavors, a three-dimensional (3-D) object must be reconstructed from serial cross sections, either to aid in the comprehension of the object's structure or to facilitate its automatic manipulation and analysis. If the cross sections are not closely spaced, interpolation is needed to recapture the appearance of the embedded 3-D object. In this paper, we propose an interpolation scheme for filling the space between the contours in two successive slices. The essential idea is to identify a force field acting on one contour and try to distort it to be like the other contour. The major advantages of this method are its superior capabilities in handling the branching problem and making use of the graphics rendering method for solid objects composed of slices of voxels. Several experiments were conducted to demonstrate the interpolation method using synthetic, PET, and MR images.