Harmonic Functions for Data Reconstruction on 3D Manifolds

Abstract

The goal of smooth function reconstruction on a 2D or 3D manifold is to obtain a smooth function on surfaces or higher dimensional manifolds. It is a common problem in computer graphics and computational mathematics, especially in civil engineering including structural analysis of solid objects. In this chapter, we introduce a new method using harmonic functions for solving this problem. This method contains the following steps: (1) Partition the boundary surfaces of the 3D manifold based on sample points so that each sample point is on the edge of the partition. (2) Use gradually varied interpolation on the edges so that each point on the edge will be assigned a value. In addition, all values on the edge are gradually varied. (3) Use discrete harmonic functions to fit the unknown points, i.e. the points inside each partition patch. This solution of the fitting becomes the piecewise harmonic function.