Isosurface Extraction of Volumetric Data Using Implicit Surface Polygonization

Isosurface extraction is always an interesting topic in the field of computer graphics and scientific visualization. This study surveys isosurface construction methods, particularly in implicit surface polygonization using tracking partition. An investigation is conducted on the implementation of it. With reference of original Jules Bloomenthal’s implementation, an extension of the implicit surface polygonization is developed with concern of real volumetric data. Rather than conventional methods, such as Marching Cubes and its variants, the method has advantages on time complexity, flexibility and is easy to implement. A brief comparison has been done among these methods. During the development, some practical issues, such as starting point placement, seed point generation, manifold surface, manifold-with-boundary, are addressed. Possible solutions of these problems are suggested. Some ideas on enhancement of the method are conveyed at end of this paper for further work.