Wireframe Projections: Physical Realisability of Curved Objects and Unambiguous Reconstruction of Simple Polyhedra

The reconstruction of an object from a single 2D projection of a 3D wireframe model is a vision problem with applications in CAD/CAM and computer graphics.We propose an algorithm for the interpretation of wireframe projections based on assigning semantic and numerical depth labels to lines. This method allows us to state necessary and sufficient conditions for the physical realisability of a wireframe projection of a curved object. The presence of linear features provides further constraints on the positions of object vertices. For example, each straight line gives rise to a coplanarity constraint between a set of object vertices. We show that extra information, such as vanishing points, parallel lines or user-entered depth-parity information, is sufficient to uniquely determine the face-circuits in wireframe projections of polyhedra with simple trihedral vertices. In fact, a polyhedron with simple trihedral vertices can be unambiguously reconstructed from its 3D wireframe model