Smoothed local generalized cones: an axial representation of 3D shapes

The recovery of viewpoint-independent descriptions of 3D shapes from two-and-one-half dimensional images. A novel 3D shape representation called the smoothed local generalized cones (SLGCs) is proposed. This representation is suitable for recovery of the axis, because the local constraint that characterizes a data set corresponding to the same axis point, namely, the local generalized cone (LGC), is explicitly defined. The extracted axis can be used as a basis for determining a natural parameterization of the object surface. Using this parameterization, the deformable surface fitting problem results in a linear least-squares problem, so stable volumetric recovery is possible. Recovery experiments involving real 3D range images are reported. >