Recent advances in electron microscopy have , for the first time, enabled imaging of single cells in 3D at a nanometer length scale resolution . An uncharted frontier for in silico biology is the ability to simulate cellular processes using these observed geometries. Enabling such simulations will require a system for going from electron micrographs to 3D volume meshes, which can then form the basis of computer simulations of such processes using numerical techniques such as the Finite Element Method (FEM) . In this paper, we develop an end-to-end pipeline for this task by adapting and extending computer graphics mesh processing and smoothing algorithms. Our workflow makes use of our recently rewritten mesh processing software, GAMer 2, which implements several mesh conditioning algorithms and serves as a platform to connect different pipeline steps. We apply this pipeline to  a series of electron micrographs of neuronal dendrite morphology explored at three different length scales and demonstrate that the resultant meshes are suitable for finite element simulations. Our pipeline, which consists of free and open-source community driven tools, is a step towards routine physical simulations of biological processes in realistic geometries . We posit that a new frontier at the intersection of computational technologies and single cell biology is now open. Innovations in algorithms to reconstruct and simulate cellular length scale phenomena based on emerging structural data will enable realistic physical models and advance discovery  .
Recent advances in electron microscopy have enabled the imaging of single cells in 3D at nanometer length scale resolutions . An uncharted frontier for in silico biology is the ability to simulate cellular processes using these observed geometries. Enabling such simulations requires watertight meshing of electron micrograph images into 3D volume meshes, which can then form the basis of computer simulations of such processes using numerical techniques such as the Finite Element Method . In this paper, we describe the use of our recently rewritten mesh processing software, GAMer 2, to bridge the gap between poorly conditioned meshes generated from segmented micrographs and boundary marked tetrahedral meshes which are compatible with simulation. We demonstrate the application of a workflow using GAMer 2 to a series of electron micrographs of neuronal dendrite morphology explored at three different length scales and show that the resulting meshes are suitable for finite element simulations. This work is an important step towards making physical simulations of biological processes in realistic geometries routine. Innovations in algorithms to reconstruct and simulate cellular length scale phenomena based on emerging structural data will enable realistic physical models and advance discovery at the interface of geometry and cellular processes. We posit that a new frontier at the intersection of computational technologies and single cell biology is now open .
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develop an end-to-end pipeline for this task by adapting and extending computer graphics mesh processing and smoothing algorithms. Our workflow makes
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bridge the gap between poorly conditioned meshes generated from segmented micrographs and boundary marked tetrahedral meshes which are compatible with simulation. We demonstrate the application of a workflow using GAMer 2 to
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at the interface of geometry and cellular processes. We posit that a new frontier at the intersection of computational technologies and single cell biology is now open