Title: Fast and high-quality tetrahedral mesh generation from neuroanatomical scans,
Abstract: Creating tetrahedral meshes with anatomically accurate surfaces is critically
important for a wide range of model-based neuroimaging modalities. However,
computationally efficient brain meshing algorithms and software are greatly
lacking. Here, we report a fully automated open-source software to rapidly
create high-quality tetrahedral meshes from brain segmentations. Built upon
various open-source meshing utilities, the proposed meshing workflow allows
robust generation of complex head and brain mesh models from multi-label
volumes, tissue probability maps, surface meshes and their combinations. The
quality of the complex tissue boundaries is preserved through a surface-based
approach, allowing fine-grained control over the sizes and quality of the mesh
elements through explicit user-defined meshing criteria. The proposed meshing
pipeline is highly versatile and compatible with many commonly used brain
analysis tools, including SPM, FSL, FreeSurfer, and BrainSuite. With this
mesh-generation pipeline, we demonstrate that one can generate 3D full-head
meshes that combine scalp, skull, cerebrospinal fluid, gray matter, white
matter, and air cavities with a typical processing time of less than 40
seconds. This approach can also incorporate highly detailed cortical and white
matter surface meshes derived from FSL and FreeSurfer with tissue segmentation
data. Finally, a high-quality brain atlas mesh library for different age
groups, ranging from infants to elderlies, was built to demonstrate the
robustness of the proposed workflow, as well as to serve as a common platform
for simulation-based brain studies. Our open-source meshing software
"brain2mesh" and the human brain atlas mesh library can be downloaded at
this http URL.