Surface Reconstruction Using Alpha Shapes

        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 a-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 a-shapes to the extent that they are visible from outside. Unlike the original a-shapes, the polygonal surfaces can be easily simplified to yield compact models suitable for a variety of geometric modeling applications such as surface fitting.

By: Baining Guo (Univ. of Toronto, Canada), Jai Menon and Brian Willette (Univ. of CO)

Published in: RC20689 in 1997

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