[Paraview] Blood vessel network (spatial graph) visualisation

[Simon Walker-Samuel]

Hi,

I'm investigating how I might use ParaView to visualise large 3D spatial 
graphs (i.e. a spatial distribution of nodes connected by segments) that 
represent blood vessel networks in tumours. I usually use Amira or 
Imaris for this, but would much prefer to use an open source solution 
like ParaView. My current project aims to simulate blood flow and drug 
delivery to tumours, which has lots of potential for in-depth visualisation.

To start off with, I am trying to work out if it's possible to display 
this type of network in ParaView as connected tubes, with radii scaled 
by the size of the vessels. As I say, these datasets are large, 
typically with around 300k segments. If this kind of visualisation is 
available (or potentially could be developed), the next challenge would 
be to find a file format that could be use to import them.

My data is currently in Amira mesh (spatial graph) format, which 
consists of multiple fields that define 1) the 3D coordinates of the 
nodes, 2) connections (segments) between the nodes, 3) 3D coordinates 
defining the path of the segments and 4) scalar fields defining 
atrributes of the segments (e.g. vessel radius, blood flow, pressure, etc.).

I've searched unsuccessfully for Amira mesh readers (or the similar 
Duke-Southampton format), but perhaps this area has not yet been 
explored as an application for ParaView?

Any initial guidance would be much appreciated.

Best wishes,
Simon