[vtkusers] Generation of Tet Mesh from Stack of Binary Images

[Michael Jackson]

I'm getting into some new territory for myself so I was hoping to get  
a "push" in the proper direction from the vtk community.

I have a stack of binary images (black and white). I would like to  
turn this into a "TetMesh" in order to feed that tetmesh into an  
Finite Element analysis program.

Question: what is the basic workflow/pipeline or what filters do I  
need to use to get there. From searching around in the VTK docs it  
looks like I should be able to use the vtkRectilinearGridToTetrahedra  
class. Getting the my image stack into the vtkRectilinearGrid is  
straight forward code.

Is this the correct approach?

Also could anyone comment on the amount of memory usage based on stack  
size? For instance the initial stack of images would be 7700px X  
8720px X 870px. Lets assume about 30% to 40% of the volume is the  
phase that I want meshed. Trying to figure out if this is even doable  
on a "PC" (even one with 32GB of RAM and 64 Bit OS) or if I need to go  
to a "SuperComputer" to get the mesh complete. There is a possibility  
of reducing the XY pixel size by resampling the image if that would  
help.

Thanks in advance for any comments or words of wisdom.

Respectfully
_________________________________________________________
Mike Jackson                  mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
BlueQuartz Software                    www.bluequartz.net
Principal Software Engineer                  Dayton, Ohio