Abstract
Finite element method (FEM) is a well-known technique for modeling object physical behaviors. The FE analysis uses polyhedral mesh model, called FE model, of the object to be analyzed. The accuracy of the FE analysis depends on the quality of the polyhedral elements of the FE model. Here, theoretically, the FE analysis using hexahedral elements is superior to that of tetrahedral elements. However, hexahedral element construction needs to be satisfied with more constraints simultaneously compared with the tetrahedral element. Owing to the reason, there are few methods for generating hexahedral FE model of objects with complex shapes. This paper presents an automatic method for generating hexahedral FE model of human tissues. The proposed method is based on a Growing Self-organizing Deformable Model (GSDM) that is a deformable volumetric model. Practically, give a tissue surface model, we use as the initial GSDM the hexahedral model of the cuboid converted with the tissue. The hexahedral FE model is obtained by deforming the GSDM to fit the GSDM to the tissue surface and improve the quality of each element shape.
