Brian Whited

Patient-specific surgical planning and hemodynamic computational fluid dynamics optimization through free-form haptic anatomy editing tool (SURGEM)

The first version of an anatomy editing/surgical planning tool (SURGEM) targeting anatomical complexity and patient-specific computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is presented. Novel three-dimensional (3D) shape editing concepts and human–shape interaction technologies have been integrated to facilitate interactive surgical morphology alterations, grid generation and CFD analysis. In order to implement “manual hemodynamic optimization” at the surgery planning phase for patients with congenital heart defects, these tools are applied to design and evaluate possible modifications of patient-specific anatomies. In this context, anatomies involve complex geometric topologies and tortuous 3D blood flow pathways with multiple inlets and outlets. These tools make it possible to freely deform the lumen surface and to bend and position baffles through real-time, direct manipulation of the 3D models with both hands, thus eliminating the tedious and time-consuming phase of entering the desired geometry using traditional computer-aided design (CAD) systems. The 3D models of the modified anatomies are seamlessly exported and meshed for patient-specific CFD analysis. Free-formed anatomical modifications are quantified using an in-house skeletization based cross-sectional geometry analysis tool. Hemodynamic performance of the systematically modified anatomies is compared with the original anatomy using CFD. CFD results showed the relative importance of the various surgically created features such as pouch size, vena cave to pulmonary artery (PA) flare and PA stenosis. An interactive surgical-patch size estimator is also introduced. The combined design/analysis cycle time is used for comparing and optimizing surgical plans and improvements are tabulated. The reduced cost of patient-specific shape design and analysis process, made it possible to envision large clinical studies to assess the validity of predictive patient-specific CFD simulations. In this paper, model anatomical design studies are performed on a total of eight different complex patient specific anatomies. Using SURGEM, more than 30 new anatomical designs (or candidate configurations) are created, and the corresponding user times presented. CFD performances for eight of these candidate configurations are also presented.

Ink-and-ray: Bas-relief meshes for adding global illumination effects to hand-drawn characters

We present a new approach for generating global illumination renderings of hand-drawn characters using only a small set of simple annotations. Our system exploits the concept of bas-relief sculptures, making it possible to generate 3D proxies suitable for rendering without requiring side-views or extensive user input. We formulate an optimization process that automatically constructs approximate geometry sufficient to evoke the impression of a consistent 3D shape. The resulting renders provide the richer stylization capabilities of 3D global illumination while still retaining the 2D hand-drawn look-and-feel. We demonstrate our approach on a varied set of hand-drawn images and animations, showing that even in comparison to ground-truth renderings of full 3D objects, our bas-relief approximation is able to produce convincing global illumination effects, including self-shadowing, glossy reflections, and diffuse color bleeding.

BetweenIT: An Interactive Tool for Tight Inbetweening

The generation of inbetween frames that interpolate a given set of key frames is a major component in the production of a 2D feature animation. Our objective is to considerably reduce the cost of the inbetweening phase by offering an intuitive and effective interactive environment that automates inbetweening when possible while allowing the artist to guide, complement, or override the results. Tight inbetweens, which interpolate similar key frames, are particularly time‐consuming and tedious to draw. Therefore, we focus on automating these high‐precision and expensive portions of the process. We have designed a set of user‐guided semi‐automatic techniques that fit well with current practice and minimize the number of required artist‐gestures. We present a novel technique for stroke interpolation from only two keys which combines a stroke motion constructed from logarithmic spiral vertex trajectories with a stroke deformation based on curvature averaging and twisting warps. We discuss our system in the context of a feature animation production environment and evaluate our approach with real production data.

Individualized computer-based surgical planning to address pulmonary arteriovenous malformations in patients with a single ventricle with an interrupted inferior vena cava and azygous continuation

OBJECTIVE Pulmonary arteriovenous malformations caused by abnormal hepatic flow distribution can develop in patients with a single ventricle with an interrupted inferior vena cava. However, preoperatively determining the hepatic baffle design that optimizes hepatic flow distribution is far from trivial. The current study combines virtual surgery and numeric simulations to identify potential surgical strategies for patients with an interrupted inferior vena cava. METHODS Five patients with an interrupted inferior vena cava and severe pulmonary arteriovenous malformations were enrolled. Their in vivo anatomies were reconstructed from magnetic resonance imaging (n = 4) and computed tomography (n = 1), and alternate virtual surgery options (intracardiac/extracardiac, Y-grafts, hepato-to-azygous shunts, and azygous-to-hepatic shunts) were generated for each. Hepatic flow distribution was assessed for all options using a fully validated computational flow solver. RESULTS For patients with a single superior vena cava (n = 3), intracardiac/extracardiac connections proved dangerous, because even a small left or right offset led to a highly preferential hepatic flow distribution to the associated lung. The best results were obtained with either a Y-graft spanning the Kawashima to split the flow or hepato-to-azygous shunts to promote mixing. For patients with bilateral superior vena cavae (n = 2), results depended on the balance between the left and right superior inflows. When those were equal, connecting the hepatic baffle between the superior vena cavae performed well, but other options should be pursued otherwise. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates how virtual surgery environments can benefit the clinical community, especially for patients with a single ventricle with an interrupted inferior vena cava. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the optimal baffle design to the superior inflows underscores the need to characterize both preoperative anatomy and flows to identify the best option.

Smart Scribbles for Sketch Segmentation

We present ‘Smart Scribbles’—a new scribble‐based interface for user‐guided segmentation of digital sketchy drawings. In contrast to previous approaches based on simple selection strategies, Smart Scribbles exploits richer geometric and temporal information, resulting in a more intuitive segmentation interface. We introduce a novel energy minimization formulation in which both geometric and temporal information from digital input devices is used to define stroke‐to‐stroke and scribble‐to‐stroke relationships. Although the minimization of this energy is, in general, an NP‐hard problem, we use a simple heuristic that leads to a good approximation and permits an interactive system able to produce accurate labellings even for cluttered sketchy drawings. We demonstrate the power of our technique in several practical scenarios such as sketch editing, as‐rigid‐as‐possible deformation and registration, and on‐the‐fly labelling based on pre‐classified guidelines.

TexToons: practical texture mapping for hand-drawn cartoon animations

We present a novel and practical texture mapping algorithm for hand-drawn cartoons that allows the production of visually rich animations with minimal user effort. Unlike previous techniques, our approach works entirely in the 2D domain and does not require the knowledge or creation of a 3D proxy model. Inspired by the fact that the human visual system tends to focus on the most salient features of a scene, which we observe for hand-drawn cartoons are the contours rather than the interior of regions, we can create the illusion of temporally coherent animation using only rough 2D image registration. This key observation allows us to design a simple yet effective algorithm that significantly reduces the amount of manual labor required to add visually complex detail to an animation, thus enabling efficient cartoon texturing for computer-assisted animation production pipelines. We demonstrate our technique on a variety of input animations as well as provide examples of postprocessing operations that can be applied to simulate 3D-like effects entirely in the 2D domain.

Temporal noise control for sketchy animation

We propose a technique to control the temporal noise present in sketchy animations. Given an input animation drawn digitally, our approach works by combining motion extraction and inbetweening techniques to generate a reduced-noise sketchy animation registered to the input animation. The amount of noise is then controlled by a continuous parameter value. Our method can be applied to effectively reduce the temporal noise present in sequences of sketches to a desired rate, while preserving the geometric richness of the sketchy style in each frame. This provides the manipulation of temporal noise as an additional artistic parameter, e.g. to emphasize character emotions and scene atmosphere, and enables the display of sketchy content to broader audiences by producing animations with comfortable noise levels. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a series of rough hand-drawn animations.

BALL-MAP: HOMEOMORPHISM BETWEEN COMPATIBLE SURFACES

Homeomorphisms between curves and between surfaces are fundamental to many applications of 3D modeling, graphics, and animation. They define how to map a texture from one object to another, how to morph between two shapes, and how to measure the discrepancy between shapes or the variability in a class of shapes. Previously proposed maps between two surfaces, S and S′, suffer from two drawbacks: (1) it is difficult to formally define a relation between S and S′ which guarantees that the map will be bijective and (2) mapping a point x of S to a point x′ of S′ and then mapping x′ back to S does in general not yield x, making the map asymmetric. We propose a new map, called ball-map, that is symmetric. We define simple and precise conditions for the ball-map to be a homeomorphism. We show that these conditions apply when the minimum feature size of each surface exceeds their Hausdorff distance. The ball-map, BMS,S′, between two such manifolds, S and S′, maps each point x of S to a point x′ = BMs,s′(x) of S′. BMS′,S is the inverse of BMS,S′, hence BM is symmetric. We also show that, when S and S′ are Ck (n - 1)-manifolds in ℝn, BMS,S′ is a Ck-1 diffeomorphism and defines a Ck-1 ambient isotopy that smoothly morphs between S to S′. In practice, the ball-map yields an excellent map for transferring parameterizations and textures between ball compatible curves or surfaces. Furthermore, it may be used to define a morph, during which each point x of S travels to the corresponding point x′ of S′ along a broken line that is normal to S at x and to S′ at x′.

b-morphs between b-compatible curves in the plane

We define b-compatibility for planar curves and propose three ball morphing techniques (b-morphs) between pairs of b-compatible curves. B-morphs use the automatic ball-map correspondence, proposed by Chazal et al. [12], from which they derive vertex trajectories (Linear, Circular, Parabolic). All are symmetric, meeting both curves with the same angle, which is a right angle for the Circular and Parabolic. We provide simple constructions for these b-morphs using the maximal disks in the finite region bounded by the two curves. We compare the b-morphs to each other and to other simple morphs (Linear Interpolation (LI), Closest Projection (CP), Curvature Interpolation (CI), Laplace Blending (LB), Heat Propagation (HP)) using seven measures of quality deficiency (travel distance, distortion, stretch, local acceleration, surface area, average curvature, maximal curvature). We conclude that the ratios of these measures depends heavily on the test case, especially for LI, CI, and LB, which compute correspondence from a uniform geodesic parameterization. Nevertheless, we found that the Linear b-morph has consistently the shortest travel distance and that the Circular b-morph has the least amount of distortion.

Pearling: stroke segmentation with crusted pearl strings

We introduce a novel segmentation technique, called Pearling, for the semi-automatic extraction of idealized models of networks of strokes (variable width curves) in images. These networks may for example represent roads in an aerial photograph, vessels in a medical scan, or strokes in a drawing. The operator seeds the process by selecting representative areas of good (stroke interior) and bad colors. Then, the operator may either provide a rough trace through a particular path in the stroke graph or simply pick a starting point (seed) on a stroke and a direction of growth. Pearling computes in realtime the centerlines of the strokes, the bifurcations, and the thickness function along each stroke, hence producing a purified medial axis transform of a desired portion of the stroke graph. No prior segmentation or thresholding is required. Simple gestures may be used to trim or extend the selection or to add branches. The realtime performance and reliability of Pearling results from a novel disk-sampling approach, which traces the strokes by optimizing the positions and radii of a discrete series of disks (pearls) along the stroke. A continuous model is defined through subdivision. By design, the idealized pearl string model is slightly wider than necessary to ensure that it contains the stroke boundary. A narrower core model that fits inside the stroke is computed simultaneously. The difference between the pearl string and its core contains the boundary of the stroke and may be used to capture, compress, visualize, or analyze the raw image data along the stroke boundary.