Segmentation of multi-material CT data of mechanical parts for extracting boundary surfaces

We introduce a method for segmentation of materials segmented in volumetric models of mechanical parts created by X-ray CT scanning for the purpose of generating their boundary surfaces. When the volumetric model is composed of two materials, one for the object and the other for the background (Air), these boundary surfaces can be extracted as isosurfaces using a surface contouring method. For a volumetric model composed of more than two materials, we need to classify the voxel types into segments by material and then use a surface contouring method that can deal with both CT values and material types. Here we propose a method for precisely classifying the volumetric model into its component materials using a modified and combined method of two well-known algorithms in image segmentation, region growing and Graph-cut. We then apply our non-manifold iso-contouring method to generate triangulated mesh surfaces. In addition, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by constructing high-quality triangular mesh models of the segmented parts.