Finding and matching topographic features in 3-D object meshes

Abstract

This dissertation defines a spatial symbolic model that can be used to describe classes of 3-D objects (anatomical and man-made) and a method for finding correspondences between the features of the symbolic models and point sets of 3-D mesh data. An abstract symbolic model is used to describe spatial object classes in terms of parts, boundaries, and spatial associations. A working model is a mechanism to link the symbolic model to geometric information found in a sensed instance of the class, represented by a 3D mesh data set. Matching is performed in a three-step procedure that first finds working sets of points in the mesh, then fits constructed features to these sets, and finally selects a subset of these constructed features that best correspond to the features of the working model.