Week 11: Quantifying Wound Volume

This week I finally had a breakthrough in how to quantify my data so that it's more accurate. MeshLab has a lot of features, including a way to assign number values to a model's geometry.

My first step was to go through the process that I had discussed in my post from week 9 to scale the model to real life measurements. I used an electronic ruler to find the length of the wound in millimeters then adjusted the models dimensions.

One challenge I faced was trying to find the area of the base. Since these are triangulated models, most of the selection tools captured a rectangular area. 

However, by using the paint tool, I was able to customize the face I wanted to select. I had to be incredibly careful not to color areas that were not in the base.

The computation tool was able to give me a good approximation of the area of the base, as well as the perimeter of the wound. The picture below shows the area used to calculate the base.

Next I used the measuring tape tool to calculate the depth of the wound. This step is shown in the image below.

My volume calculation came from multiplying the area of the base times the height. For this particular model, my approximation was 14,493.875 millimeters cubed.