Towards uniform point distribution in feature-preserving point cloud filtering

Abstract

While a popular representation of 3D data, point clouds may contain noise and need filtering before use. Existing point cloud filtering methods either cannot preserve sharp features or result in uneven point distributions in the filtered output. To address this problem, this paper introduces a point cloud filtering method that considers both point distribution and feature preservation during filtering. The key idea is to incorporate a repulsion term with a data term in energy minimization. The repulsion term is responsible for the point distribution, while the data term aims to approximate the noisy surfaces while preserving geometric features. This method is capable of handling models with fine-scale features and sharp features. Extensive experiments show that our method quickly yields good results with relatively uniform point distribution.