Decimation of iso-surfaces with deformable models

For many medical applications including computer assisted surgery it is nec essary to perform scienti c computations such as mechanical deformation on anatomical structure models Such patient based anatomical models are often ex tracted from volumetric medical images as isosurfaces In this paper we introduce a new algorithm for the decimation of isosurfaces based on deformable models The method emphasizes the creation of mesh of high geometric and topological properties well suited for performing scienti c computation It allows a close con trol of the distance of the mesh to the isosurface as well a the overall smoothness of the mesh The isosurface is stored in a data structure that enables the fast computation of the distance to the isosurface Finally our method can handle very large datasets by merging pieces of isosurfaces