Straightening a curved cylindrical structure

Hello!

I have a solid, wavy, cylindrical structure (with varying values inside) created from a skeleton (bwskel) in a volume. It's kind of squigly and doesn't have any particular direction. I would like to transform this to a cylindrical structure so it displays as a striaght pipe with the correct (interpolated?) values inside. Any ideas on how to do it efficiently? Thanks.

NG

Answer 1

[Pratyush]

Hi Cat-22,

To straighten a wavy cylindrical structure in MATLAB and maintain the internal values, you would follow these general steps:

• Use the skeleton of the structure ("bwskel") to find the wavy centerline.
• Assign a parameter (like arc length) to the centerline to help map the volume to a straight pipe.
• Calculate the planes perpendicular to the centerline at each point to sample the structure's cross-section.
• Map the 3D points of each cross-section to a 2D plane to "unwrap" the structure.
• Create a straight cylindrical grid and interpolate the unwrapped values onto it.
• Use the interpolated grid to reconstruct the structure as a straight pipe.

Hope this helps.