The approach of the WEM (Winged Edge Mesh) library is to unitize the generation, the processing and the rendering of surface representations. The library in MeVisLab offers a basis for dealing with common tasks: an iso surface can be generated at a certain threshold out of medical images, the resulting surface can be reduced in its amount of primitives or can be smoothed by using different algorithms. For rendering, the surface can be colored in order to reflect certain additional information or according to a flexible coloring scheme out of the image data itself. Finally, all the generated and modified surfaces can be saved and loaded with a variety of different file formats that are compliant with standard 3D applications.

New WEM modules may be created with the Project Wizard, see the MeVisLab Reference Manual, chapter “WEM Module (Wizard)”.

	Note
	The WEM wizard is intended for implementing ML-based modules. Although there are WEM modules based on Open Inventor in the library, the creation of those is not documented.

For documentation on WEM in MeVisLab, see the Toolbox Class Reference, section WEM. The chapter “WEM Data Structure” gives an overview of the concepts behind WEM.

For available WEM modules, enter “WEM” in the quick search. Their example networks offer insights into the features and functionality of WEM.

Figure 15.1. WEM IsoSurface Example Network

Although the focus of WEM is more on calculation and display than on interaction, interactivity can be implemented like in the following example:

Figure 15.2. WEM Extrude Example Network