This paper proposes a new representation scheme of the cerebral blood
vessels. This model provides information on the semantics of the
vascular structure: the topological relationships between vessels and
the labeling of vascular accidents such as aneurysms and stenoses.
In addition, the model keeps information of the inner surface geometry
as well as of the vascular map volume properties, i.e. the tissue
density, the blood flow velocity and the vessel wall elasticity.
The model can be constructed automatically in a pre-process from a set
of segmented MRA images. Its memory requirements are optimized on the
basis of the sparseness of the vascular structure. It allows fast
queries and efficient traversals and navigations. The visualizations
of the vessel surface can be performed at different levels of
detail. The direct rendering of the volume is fast because the model
provides a natural way to skip over empty data.
The paper analyzes the memory requirements of the model along with the
costs of the most important operations on it.Postprint (published version
