Skip to content

← ArchivePaper2021

Interactive Modelling of Volumetric Musculoskeletal Anatomy

Rinat Abdrashitov, Seungbae Bang, David I.W. Levin, Karan Singh, Alec Jacobson

SIGGRAPHAcademic14 citesMusclesRigging

Volumetric segmentation approach assigns every point in a character volume to muscle, fat, or bone, with interactive muscle-curve-driven authoring tools.

Abstract

We present a new approach for modelling musculoskeletal anatomy. Unlike previous methods, we do not model individual muscle shapes as geometric primitives (polygonal meshes, NURBS etc.). Instead, we adopt a volumetric segmentation approach where every point in our volume is assigned to a muscle, fat, or bone tissue. We provide an interactive modelling tool where the user controls the segmentation via muscle curves and we visualize the muscle shapes using volumetric rendering. Muscle curves enable intuitive yet powerful control over the muscle shapes. This representation allows us to automatically handle intersections between different tissues (muscle-muscle, muscle-bone, and muscle-skin) during the modelling and automates computation of muscle fiber fields. We further introduce a novel algorithm for converting the volumetric muscle representation into tetrahedral or surface geometry for use in downstream tasks. Additionally, we introduce an interactive skeleton authoring tool that allows the users to create skeletal anatomy starting from only a skin mesh using a library of bone parts.

How to read this

Category
Method: interactive volumetric anatomy modelling
Contributions
  • A volumetric segmentation representation that assigns every point in the character volume to muscle, fat, or bone rather than modelling muscles as separate geometric primitives
  • Interactive muscle-curve authoring with volumetric rendering that automatically handles tissue intersections and computes muscle fiber fields
  • An algorithm to convert the volumetric representation into tetrahedral or surface geometry, plus a skeleton authoring tool that builds bones from a skin mesh using a parts library
Context
Relates to physics-based anatomical character modelling, building on Kadlecek et al.'s work on reconstructing personalized anatomical models for body animation, but replaces per-muscle geometric primitives with a unified volumetric segmentation.Builds on: Reconstructing Personalized Anatomical Models for Physics-based Body Animation
Correctness
The approach is presented as an interactive authoring tool, so its value rests on artist usability and the fidelity of the curve-driven segmentation rather than on a quantitative ground-truth comparison; readers should note results are demonstrated on authored examples, not validated against medical anatomy.
Clarity
Accessible at a conceptual level; a first pass conveys the representation and tooling, a second pass is needed for the segmentation and geometry-conversion algorithm.
How to read it
Focus on the volumetric-vs-primitive framing and the muscle-curve control in pass one; do a second pass on the conversion-to-tet/surface algorithm and fiber-field computation if you plan to feed downstream simulation.

Builds on

Built upon by

Nothing yet.

Related work

Keywords

This page summarises the entry and links to its original source. The archive never hosts or redistributes the publication itself.Show it in the full archive list →