Approach of heterogeneous bio-modeling based on material features

To capture the heterogeneity of biomaterials, a material feature based approach of heterogeneous bio-modelling is presented in this paper. The concept of material feature is defined as the specified material distribution of a certain sub-region within a solid, which is a high level abstraction of design intent. These material features are finally laid down on the function representations, which consist of materialion of design intent. These material features are finally laid down on the function representations, which consist of material composition functions. The definition, formation and domain of material composition functions are formally presented. In order to facilitate the evaluation of material distribution, these functions are classified into component function and constraint function. Meanwhile, to capture the distinct material composition partition existing in medical objects, the material interface is introduced. The problem of overlapping and/or ambiguous of the feature domains is addressed. Finally, the feature tree for storing, evaluating of material features and tracing of design intents is proposed and the feature solving algorithm is presented. A prototype heterogeneous bio-modeling system is implemented based on open source graphics kernel VTK, with the help of translation layer to improve the system’s efficiency and compatibility. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.