A plug-in for Local Mesh Modeling to Extend VTK Library: An Application for the Medical Sector

In the last years, rising technologies, such as mixed reality and additive manufacturing, have always required to improve the quality of interaction with 3D models based on polygon meshes. The use of polygon meshes is also due to the use of reverse engineering techniques. The demand of reverse engineering is rising constantly in several industrials fields (e.g., medical fields and fashion industry) and the request of getting high quality polygonal mesh is growing. This paper presents a set of software modules for using a set of existent mesh modelling algorithms as part of an open-source software library widely used to develop scientific virtual environments. The main aim has been the software development of local mesh modelling algorithms to shape triangle meshes as an extension of VTK (Visualization ToolKit) library (an open-source software development kit –SDK, usually exploited to develop scientific applications). The implemented algorithms permit to create virtual modelling tools that emulate the tasks executed during the traditional manufacturing process by using hands or tools (e.g., rasp). They have been applied to the design of a medical device that requires a high level of customization, i.e. the socket of lower limb prosthesis.