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Union of
Spheres
Model for
Volumetric
Data
Vishwa
Ranjan and
Alain
Fournier
Appeared in Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry
(pp. C2-C3; Vancouver, Canada)
TR-95-29
ABSTRACT
A stable representation of an object means that the representation is
unique, is independent of the sampling geometry, resolution, noise, and other
small distortions in the data, and is instead linked to the shape of the
object. Stable representations help characterize shapes for comparison or
recognition; skeletal (or medial axis) and volumetric primitive models have
been popular in vision for the same reason. Piecewise polyhedral
representations, e.g., tetrahedra, and voxel representations, e.g., octrees,
generally tend to be unstable.
We propose a representation for 3D objects based on the set union of
overlapping sphere primitives. This union of spheres (UoS) model has some
attractive properties for computer graphics, computational vision, and
scientific visualization.