A new vector field distance transform and its application to mesh processing from 3D scanned data

Abstract

In this paper we define a new 3D vector field distance transform to implicitly represent a mesh surface. We show that this new representation is more accurate than the classic scalar field distance transform by comparing both representations with an error metric evaluation. The widely used marching cube triangulation algorithm is adapted to the new vector field distance transform to correctly reconstruct the resulting explicit surface. In the reconstruction process of 3D scanned data, the useful mesh denoising operation is extended to the new vector field representation, which enables adaptive and selective filtering features. Results show that mesh processing with this new vector field representation is more accurate than with the scalar field distance transform and that it outperforms previous mesh filtering algorithms. Future work is discussed to extend this new vector field representation to other mesh useful operations and applications.