Extending ReconstructMe with Measuring Capatibilities

by Sabine Winkler

We are a group of students from the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg (Software Engineering) and have teamed-up with PROFACTOR, the creators of ReconstructMe. For the last two semesters we have been working hard to create a tool that enables you to calculate the perimeter of an object as well as the distance between two points on the surface of the model.

The image below shows a slice through an human head bust and the resulting paths. All measurements are evaluated in real-time.

Measuring using a slicing Plane. All paths with their corresponding perimater are evaluated seperately.

As you can see, it supports the calculation of multiple perimeters when cut with a plane aligned to two of the axes. The tool is able to recognize these perimeters completely independent from each other and highlights them in different colors. Think of it as a tool that can be used to load models from your file system, currently supporting PLY and STL file formats. This works by selecting a file from your computer or by passing a command-line argument.

Additionally, you can put two points anywhere on the surface of the loaded model to calculate the geodesic distance (the distance on the surface) between these points.

Geodesic distance between two selected points and the corresponding path.

This can be especially handy e. g. for an orthopaedic specialists or anyone who wants to take certain measurements in ReconstructMe scans. We would like to thank PROFACTOR for letting us be part of the development process of new features and for providing us with support during this time.

A note from PROFACTOR
We are currently evaluating scenarios of adding this application, or functionality of it, to ReconstructMe and/or ReconstructMe SDK. If you happen to have the need for such a feature, we would love to hear about your needs, so we can design the functionality in best fitting sense.