Visualization and Feature Extraction of the Surface Morphology of the Abdomen of Red Swamp Crayfish

This paper demonstrates a method for visual reconstruction and feature analysis of the surface morphology of red swamp crayfish in CATIA (Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application) and Microsoft Excel. Red swamp crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, with efficient burrowing activities and coupling propel pattern of abdomen with tail, was selected to study the feasible methods in the visual reconstruction and feature analysis of the surface morphology of living things. The digital measurements of surface of the red swamp crayfish were carried out using a three-dimensional laser scanner. Point clouds, the scanning digital data of the surface of the red swamp crayfish, were processed by deleting unwanted data, reconstructing surface in CATIA. There was a perfectly shape character similarity between the digital picture of the abdomen with corresponding point clouds shown in CATIA, and transverse curves which shown the surface morphology of abdomen in the cross section along the red swamp crayfish were obtained and saved as files of ASCII format in CATIA. Feature analysis of the abdomen of red swamp crayfish were carried out after files of single transverse curve were imported into Microsoft Excel, results shown that, the first row in file of single transverse curve was the number of rows after it, and those other rows stored coordinate values of measured points of the abdomen in the preset three-dimensional coordinate system, shapes of the abdomen in different cross sections were similar, and quadratic polynomial regression equation was able to effectively express surface morphology of the abdomen of red swamp crayfish. Methods and results presented in this paper prove to be potentially useful for analyzing the feature of biological prototype, optimizing the mathematical model and affording deformable physical model to bionic engineering, those works would have great implications to the research of biological coupling theory and technological creation in bionic engineering. Key words: Visual reconstruction; Feature analysis; Surface morphology; Red swamp crayfish