Generating a 3D volumetric mask from a closed surface mesh

1. A computer readable medium embodying instructions executable by a processor to perform a method for generating a volumetric mask, the method comprising:

providing a closed surface mesh;

determining a discrete volume representation of the closed surface mesh;

determining a temporary surface mask based on the closed surface mesh and a slice direction chosen from the discrete volume representation to produce a contour of the closed surface mesh for each slice of the discrete volume representation; and

filling a surface defined by the contours to generate the volumetric mask, wherein the volumetric mask is output to one of a display and a memory, wherein determining of the temporary surface mask comprises, determining two planes which define each slice and associate a clipping plane to each of the two planes;

setting up a rendering in a render texture for enabling the two clipping planes; and

drawing the contour of the surface mesh between the two clipping planes, wherein filling the surface defined by the contours to generate the volumetric mask comprises filling using one of a 2D approach and a 3D approach filling directly the contours, wherein the 2D approach comprises: placing a seed in each pixel of the bounding rectangle of each slice; and

performing a region growing operation to select an exterior of the contour.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the discrete volume representation includes defining parameters including orientation, minimum and maximum position and range of a volume of the closed surface mesh.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein

setting up the rendering in the render texture further comprises disabling anti-aliasing filters, and setting the line width.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein drawing the contour of the surface mesh between the two clipping planes comprises:

displaying edges of the clipped polygons, in the render texture; and

filling an interstitial space inside resulting edges.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein providing the closed surface mesh includes providing the closed surface mesh to a parallel processor other than a central processing unit, the method further comprising transferring data including the contours of the closed surface mesh for each slice of the discrete volume representation from the parallel processor to the central processor to build an array comprising each slice.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the parallel processor comprises a vertex buffer object for communicating with the central processor.

7. A computer system for generating a volumetric mask, the system comprising:

a memory device storing a closed surface mesh; and

a processor in communication with the memory device, the processor for reading the closed surface mesh from the memory device, determining a discrete volume representation of the closed surface mesh, determining a temporary surface mask based on the closed surface mesh and a slice direction chosen from the discrete volume representation to produce a contour of the closed surface mesh for each slice of the discrete volume representation, and filling a surface defined by the contours to generate the volumetric mask, wherein determining of the temporary surface mask comprises determining two planes which define each slice and associate a clipping plane to each of the two planes;

setting up a rendering in a render texture for enabling the two clipping planes; and

drawing the contour of the surface mesh between the two clipping planes, wherein filling the surface defined by the contours to generate the volumetric mask comprises filling using one of a 2D approach and a 3D approach filling directly the contours, wherein the 2D approach comprises: placing a seed in each pixel of the bounding rectangle of each slice; and

performing a region growing operation to select an exterior of the contour.

8. The system of claim 7 , further comprising a parallel processor in communication with the processor, the parallel processor for receiving the closed contour mesh from the processor and determining the temporary surface mask based on the closed surface mesh and the slice direction chosen from the discrete volume representation to produce the contour of the closed surface mesh for each slice of the discrete volume representation, wherein the parallel processor returns the contours to the processor.

9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the parallel processor comprises a vertex buffer object.

10. The system of claim 8 , wherein the parallel processor is a graphic processor unit.

11. The system of claim 7 , comprising a display for displaying the volumetric mask.

12. The system of claim 7 , comprising a memory for storing the volumetric mask.