Direct Thick Layer Rapid Prototyping From Medical Images

This paper discusses a technique for building medical prototypes directly from medical image data using ruled thick layers directly from medical image data. Medical image slices are currently much thicker than the layers used by most machines, but a direct slice to layer correspondence can be established with the use of thick layers. The proposed algorithm uses three image planes to interpolate a ruled edge cutter path using an adapted form of the marching squares algorithm. The algorithm has no problems with bifurcations or multiple loop contours and can create cutter paths from any high contrast