Partitioning 3D surface meshes using watershed segmentation

Author

Mangan, Alan P. ; Whitaker, Ross T.

Author_Institution

Creare Inc., Hanover, NH, USA

Volume

5

Issue

4

fYear

1999

Firstpage

308

Lastpage

321

Abstract

This paper describes a method for partitioning 3D surface meshes into useful segments. The proposed method generalizes morphological watersheds, an image segmentation technique, to 3D surfaces. This surface segmentation uses the total curvature of the surface as an indication of region boundaries. The surface is segmented into patches, where each patch has a relatively consistent curvature throughout, and is bounded by areas of higher, or drastically different, curvature. This algorithm has applications for a variety of important problems in visualization and geometrical modeling including 3D feature extraction, mesh reduction, texture mapping 3D surfaces, and computer aided design

Keywords

computational geometry; data visualisation; feature extraction; geometric programming; image segmentation; mesh generation; solid modelling; 3D feature extraction; 3D surface meshes; 3D surface meshes partitioning; computer aided design; geometrical modeling; image segmentation; mesh reduction; morphological watersheds; texture mapping; visualization; watershed segmentation; Algorithm design and analysis; Application software; Feature extraction; Image segmentation; Partitioning algorithms; Solid modeling; Surface morphology; Surface texture; Surface treatment; Visualization;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1077-2626

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/2945.817348

Filename

817348