posted on 1999-01-01, 00:00authored byDongmei Zhang, Martial Hebert
The surface-matching problem is investigated in this
paper using a mathematical tool called harmonic maps.
The theory of harmonic maps studies the mapping
between different metric manifolds from the energyminimization
point of view. With the application of
harmonic maps, a surface representation called harmonic
shape images is generated to represent and match 3D freeform
surfaces.
The basic idea of harmonic shape images is to map a 3D
surface patch with disc topology to a 2D domain and
encode the shape information of the surface patch into the
2D image. This simplifies the surface-matching problem
to a 2D image-matching problem.
Due to the application of harmonic maps in generating
harmonic shape images, harmonic shape images have the
following advantages: they have sound mathematical
background; they preserve both the shape and continuity
of the underlying surfaces; and they are robust to
occlusion and independent of any specific surface
sampling scheme.
The performance of surface matching using harmonic
maps is evaluated using real data. Preliminary results are
presented in the paper.