# Surface nets and marching cubes

**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [February 15, 2022, 9:49am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844 "2022-02-15T09:49:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![wael869](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/9f8e36/32.png) [@wael869](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/wael869)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2022, 9:49am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844/1 "2022-02-15T09:49:40Z")

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Can we use surface nets algorithm instead of marching cubes for isosurface generation?

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### Author: ![will.schroeder](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/will.schroeder/32/233_2.png) [@will.schroeder](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/will.schroeder)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2022, 10:51am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844/2 "2022-02-15T10:51:35Z")

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I am working on 2D and 3D threaded algorithms now, which will be modified to use a modified flying edges traversal and parallel smoothing - it should be much faster. They’ll be ready in a few months. The author, Sarah Frisken, is just publishing recent work that includes multi-label/multi-material extraction among other advances (which will be included in the VTK implementation). One interesting note: the algorithm was originally patented but now that the patent has expired we can add it to VTK (and other OS projects).

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### Author: ![wael869](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/9f8e36/32.png) [@wael869](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/wael869)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2022, 12:58pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844/3 "2022-02-15T12:58:09Z")

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Great news…

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### Author: ![ndahiya3](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/ndahiya3/32/6529_2.png) [@ndahiya3](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/ndahiya3)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2023, 1:45am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844/4 "2023-02-10T01:45:34Z")

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Has there been any progress on this? Has Sarah Frisken’s paper ([https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365125188\_SurfaceNets\_for\_Multi-Label\_Segmentations\_with\_Preservation\_of\_Sharp\_Boundaries](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365125188_SurfaceNets_for_Multi-Label_Segmentations_with_Preservation_of_Sharp_Boundaries)) been implemented in VTK or ITK?

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### Author: ![mwestphal](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/mwestphal/32/19_2.png) [@mwestphal](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2023, 8:40am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844/5 "2023-02-10T08:40:20Z")

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Merged last week it seems: [https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/-/merge\_requests/9074](https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/-/merge_requests/9074)

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### Author: ![ndahiya3](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/ndahiya3/32/6529_2.png) [@ndahiya3](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/ndahiya3)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2023, 3:56pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844/6 "2023-02-10T15:56:10Z")

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Great! So I’ll have to checkout some sort of nightly branch to play around with it? Please let me know. Thanks!

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### Author: ![mwestphal](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/mwestphal/32/19_2.png) [@mwestphal](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2023, 4:10pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/surface-nets-and-marching-cubes/7844/7 "2023-02-10T16:10:03Z")

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It is available in the master branch of VTK.
