Surface reconstruction from unorganized points

Abstract

We describe and demonstrate an algorithm that takes as input an unorganized set of points {x l , . . . . x n } ⊂ R 3 on or near an unknown manifold M, and produces as output a simplicial surface that approximates M. Neither the topology, the presence of boundaries, nor the geometry of M are assumed to be known in advance - all are inferred automatically from the data. This problem naturally arises in a variety of practical situations such as range scanning an object from multiple view points, recovery of biological shapes from two-dimensional slices, and interactive surface sketching.