Hierarchical segmentation of 3-D range images

The authors present a novel approach for segmentation of dense three-dimensional range images. In this approach, four local properties, namely the 3-D coordinate, the surface normal, the Gaussian curvature, and the mean curvature of each data point, are combined in a hierarchical data structure to segment a given 3-D dense range map into surface patches. This algorithm is applicable to planar as well as curved surfaces; several examples of segmentation of such surfaces are presented