FE Mesh from MRI Data

[George Foutrakis]

I am doing a finite element simulation of pulsatile blood flow in the 
cerebral arteries. I'm interested in automatically converting MRI data 
into a 3-D finite element mesh in order to obtain real vascular geometries. 
Does anyone have any experience or advice about such an undertaking ?

In theory, it seems as if this should be fairly straightforward.
After volume rendering of the MRI data, the image in represented by a
collection of voxels (3-D pixels, so to speak).  Each and every voxel has
its own unique location in the spatial domain, with the exact locations of 
its vertices known. Therefore, it should be relatively easy to convert
the spatial coordinates of the voxel vertices to nodes in a finite element 
mesh.  

I'm hoping that there is someone out there with some knowledge of this.

Thank you,
         
George Foutrakis
University of Pittsburgh
Department of Neurological Surgery