Patent ID: 7991600

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for identifying irregular volumes represented within volumetric input data, comprising the steps of: inputting one or more volume datasets comprising a multiplicity of three-dimensional cells; establishing criteria describing properties of an irregular volume of interest; processing each volume dataset, the processing comprising the steps of: traversing from cell to cell of the volume dataset until a seed cell is identified having properties matching the criteria, the identified seed cell thereby belonging to an identified irregular volume; identifying cells related to the seed cell by a predetermined relationship as belonging to the identified irregular volume; and storing in a data structure associated with each identified cell belonging to the identified irregular volume, attribute data describing properties of the identified cell; selecting an identified irregular volume; transforming each cell of the irregular volume that is selected into a polyhedral voxel representation, representation including a face string having a plurality of bits, and a position string having a plurality of bits, each bit of the face string corresponding to one face of the polyhedral voxel and having a value indicating whether the face is to be displayed, the position string having a value indicating a three-dimensional spatial position of the polyhedral voxel; and rendering the representation of each polyhedral voxel, the face string for at least one polyhedral voxel representation having a bit with a value indicating at least one face is to be displayed for an internal cell.