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Surface Reconstruction Using Alpha Shapes
Author(s) -
Guo Baining,
Me Jai,
Willette Brian
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
computer graphics forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.578
H-Index - 120
eISSN - 1467-8659
pISSN - 0167-7055
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8659.00178
Subject(s) - polygon (computer graphics) , surface (topology) , polytope , computer science , surface reconstruction , geometry , manifold (fluid mechanics) , computer graphics (images) , set (abstract data type) , polytope model , algorithm , mathematics , mechanical engineering , telecommunications , frame (networking) , engineering , programming language
We describe a method for reconstructing an unknown surface from a set of data points. The basic approach is to extract the surface as a polygon mesh from an α‐shape. Even though alpha shapes are generalized polytopes having complicated internal structures, we show that manifold surfaces, with or without boundaries, can be efficiently generated, and these surfaces completely describe the α‐shapes to the extent that they are visible from outside. Unlike the original α‐shapes, the polygonal surfaces can be easily simplified to yield compact models suitable for a variety of geometric modeling applications such as surface fitting.