Protein surface modeling using active contour model

Abstract

A PDE (partial differential equation) based method, 3D active contour model, is presented to model the surface of protein structure. Instead of generating a single molecular surface, we create a series of surfaces associated with the atomic energy inside the protein, which describe different resolutions of molecular surface. Our results indicate that the surfaces we generated are suitable for shape analysis and visualization. So, when the solvent-accessible surface is not enough to represent the features of protein structure, the evolution surface sequence may be an alternative choice. Besides, if the initial surface is smooth enough, the generated surfaces will preserve this property partly, because the evolution of the surfaces is controlled by the PDE. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.