Mesh simplification for 3D modeling using evolutionary multi-objective optimization

Polygonal surface models are typically used in three-dimensional (3D) visualizations and simulations. They are obtained by laser scanners, computer vision systems or medical imaging devices to model highly detailed object surfaces. Surface mesh simplification aims to reduce the number of faces used in a 3D model while keeping the overall shape, boundaries, and volume. In this work, we propose to deal with the mesh simplification problem from an evolutionary multi-objective viewpoint. The quality of a solution is defined by two conflicting objectives: the accuracy and the simplicity of the model. The Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) is adapted to tackle the problem. We compare the NSGA-II performance with a classical approach and a single-objective implementation. The comparison has been carried out using different datasets.