Figure 4 - Estimation of volume and surface area of a dendritic spine using Rayburst.

(a) Rayburst run from the center of mass inside each spine. (b) 3D rendering of the triangular surface mesh resulting from a low-N Rayburst run from the center of mass of a spine (O). For illustrative purposes, one of the resulting pyramids used to compute volume and surface area has been highlighted in blue. The points {A,B,C} are the vertices of the pyramid base whereas the vector N is the normal as computed by the cross-product of the vectors (B - A) and (C - A). The sum of the volumes and surface areas of all pyramids gives the total volume and surface area achieved by this Rayburst.