A fast and robust patient specific Finite Element mesh registration technique: application to 60 clinical cases

TL;DR

This paper presents a fast, automatic, and robust finite element mesh registration method that adapts a generic mesh to specific patient organ geometries, significantly reducing manual effort and computation time in clinical settings.

Contribution

The proposed Mesh-Match-and-Repair (MMRep) technique offers a novel combination of elastic registration and mesh correction, enabling quick, automatic, and high-quality patient-specific mesh generation even with partial data.

Findings

Succeeded in all 60 clinical cases tested

Produced high-accuracy, hex-dominant meshes suitable for FE analysis

Operated efficiently with submillimetric surface accuracy

Abstract

Finite Element mesh generation remains an important issue for patient specific biomechanical modeling. While some techniques make automatic mesh generation possible, in most cases, manual mesh generation is preferred for better control over the sub-domain representation, element type, layout and refinement that it provides. Yet, this option is time consuming and not suited for intraoperative situations where model generation and computation time is critical. To overcome this problem we propose a fast and automatic mesh generation technique based on the elastic registration of a generic mesh to the specific target organ in conjunction with element regularity and quality correction. This Mesh-Match-and-Repair (MMRep) approach combines control over the mesh structure along with fast and robust meshing capabilities, even in situations where only partial organ geometry is available. The technique was successfully tested on a database of 5 pre-operatively acquired complete femora CT scans, 5 femoral heads partially digitized at intraoperative stage, and 50 CT volumes of patients' heads. The MMRep algorithm succeeded in all 60 cases, yielding for each patient a hex-dominant, Atlas based, Finite Element mesh with submillimetric surface representation accuracy, directly exploitable within a commercial FE software.