Polygon Mesh Generation of Branching Structures

We present a new method for producing locally non intersecting polygon meshes of naturally branching structures. The generated polygon mesh follows the object�s underlying structure as close as possible, while still producing polygon meshes that can be visualized efficiently on commonly available graphic acceleration hardware. A priori knowledge of vascular branching systems is used to derive the polygon mesh generation method. Visualization of the internal liver vessel structures and naturally looking tree stems generated by Lindenmayer-systems is used as examples. The method produce visually convincing polygon meshes that might be used in clinical applications in the future.