DeVIDE FE-Mesher

The DeVIDE FE-Mesher is a conformal tetrahedral mesh generator for multi-material volumes. The software is developed in Delft Visualization and Image processing Development Environment (DeVIDE) as a cluster of module. A successful pre-segmentation is required as the software only works for discrete segmented volume images.

Accepted input formats are nrrd, mhd, vti, raw (as far as you can describe the data layout) and DICOM. Then, the software separates the segments. The (possibly) non-manifold objects are extracted and their medial axis is determined via the Integer Medial Axis (IMA). Subsequently, seed particles are discributed at the interfaces of the segments. These particles are optimized for maximal inter-particles distances while preserving the topology intrinsic to the sampling density. In the end, an injection-based surface meshing algorithms extracts interface-conformal surfaces for while tetrahedral volumes can be deduced.

The software itself (in terms of the modules) are composed in Python. Simple data manipulation is also done directly in python using vtkPython as visualization backend. The computationally dense and critical components – medial axis, particle system, meshing – are using a related C++ implementation from the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute Utah and the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. The visualisation itself occurs within vtkPython and a custom-designed module.

The related modules can be found in the current DeVIDE master branch. The software is a collaborative development of Charl P. Botha, Francois Malan and Christian Kehl.