Client Meeting #1

A late introduction to our client Dr Greg Ruthenbeck
has revealed some directions to look into:

- he has already a lot of experience in the field so he can steer us in certain directions

the meeting revealed:

* dont assume we have convert between volumetric formats and triangles/"shells" right away or at all, maybe some 3D printers can print from a voxel format, a print is afterall just 3D space discretised (broken up into lots of cubes)

this reminds me the 2D world - of conversion from vector graphics to bitmaps
- you dont want to do it too soon - you may be open for a loss of data or image quality. or even a slight change in perception of an image when converting from vectors to a bitmap - may not be desirable

* pre-existing software to look into

Shapeways - triangle manip ? / libraries
searching for this gave me more of a 3D model market place ?
but then I saw this
http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/supported-applications

Image J - powerful openSource image (voxel as well ?) manipulation
I had a quick look but couldnt see any mention to voxels
http://imagej.net/Welcome 

DirectX as an alternative to openGL
- better support / documentation is an advantge

wikipedia:
DirectX is a set of low-level Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that provides Windows programs with high-performance hardware-accelerated multimedia support. DirectX enables the program to easily determine the hardware capabilities of your computer, and then sets the program parameters to match.

*File Formats

Input
bitmap stacks (arrays of bitmaps)
DICON
http://www.dicomlibrary.com/dicom/

Output
stl (a shell of triangles for 3D printing) see previous post
gcode - an ascii printing description format to control a CNC machine

Action List

Follow up email for "the Client"

Download a Stanford 3D file of each available format
- done, i downloaded the partial brain
http://graphics.stanford.edu/data/voldata/

can i ?
Access it 3D with Code
Display it using direct 3D with navigation
Manipulate it in Direct 3D

Gantt Chart of tasks - can only be done after a WBS work breakdown structure
(a list of tasks we need to do)
(gantt chart is sure to be updated each week)

Draft Requirements Specification
modelling -  boolean operations are needed GUI design -
we will need a HUD with useful info ie fps, triangle count, voxel count
we will know what we need to see as we go
(this could be useful to inject supporting structures)
what (libraries) can we lean on ?


Final Requirements spec due on Friday week.

List of New terms:

CT scan (Computer Tomography)

CNC
wikipedia:
A CNC router is a computer-controlled cutting machine related to the hand held router used for cutting various hard materials, such as wood, composites, aluminium, steel, plastics, and foams. CNC stands for computer numerical control.

MRI scan Magenetic Resonance Image/Imagery
http://insideinsides.blogspot.com.au/
Houdini can convert MRI to 3D models for us and thus to Voxels or a shell
http://www.3dde.com/plugins_page.htm


possibly MRI data available here can be converted to voxels:
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visibl

GCode - an output format for printing.

Shell (triangle model ("hollow"))

Ray Marching- as i understand it - 'probing' a bunch of cubes with rays in
order to define / approximate a volume surface