[vtkusers] going from binary images to 2D contours

[Mark Roden]

Hi David,

Maybe I should just send you my data :)  I don't think that my problem
has to do with being near boundaries, as my objects are away from the
edges of the image (but not in z-- that's solved that by padding the
image by a plane in either direction in z).

The problem I'm having is that, somewhere along the way, the contours
are being transformed from 'proper' contours, in the case of the
larger mask, to ones with extra connections.

The binarization is done via the process we discussed on the other
thread; that is, the contour is binarized by first following that
function to translate polygons to lines, then
vtkPolyDataToImageStencil, then vtkImageStencil.  The reverse, from
binary to contour (which actually appears on the image), is done by
vtkMarchingCubes.  This output has extra lines.

I would love to be able to intercept the binary mask in transit, but
unfortunately, some way that I have vtkImageViewer2 set up isn't
allowing me to see it.  However, you can see the body mask from the
contour image 'body lines.png' I've attached, and then from the second
overlay image 'body with strange lines.png' the extra lines on a
single plane when overlaid with the data.

Have you seen this kind of behavior before in either method?  That
this behavior appeared either when I ran the old extrusion method or
with the new line-based method suggests to me that it's a problem with
the marching squares approach.  Hence my original question.

Thanks,
Mark

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 4:10 PM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com> wrote:
> My own experience is that vtkMarchingSquares is the best way to
> contour a 2D image.  It is the only 2D contouring filter I'm aware of
> that correctly orients the contours, i.e. so that you can be sure what
> is "inside" and what is "outside."
>
> But vtkMarchingSquares generates open contours whenever the contour
> reaches the bounds of the image... that might be the cause of the
> failures that you are seeing.  Because of this problem, I've written
> my own version of marching squares that always produces closed
> contours, you can find the code here:
> https://github.com/dgobbi/ToolCursor/blob/master/vtkImageToROIContourData.cxx
>
>  - David
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 4:43 PM, Mark Roden <mmroden at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> After a length conversation over on the developer list, I've now got a
>> very fast way to convert 2D contours from DICOM rtstructs into binary
>> data.  Now I need to do the reverse.  I already have a method, but
>> this approach is failing for large images-- and by 'failing', I mean
>> producing contours that do not look like the binary data.
>>
>> I need contours in the xy, xz, and yz planes.  It's also possible to
>> have multiple contours in any given plane.
>>
>> Right now, I'm using vtkMarchingSquares, but as I said, this is not
>> working for larger contours, and produces spurious results.
>>
>> I note that there's also vtkContourFilter, vtkMarchingContourFilter,
>> vtkSliceCubes, vtkImageMarchingCubes, etc.  Is there any reason to
>> choose one of these over the other?  What would I need for my
>> particular case?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mark
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