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Streaming Surface Reconstruction Using Wavelets

Surface reconstruction from massive point clouds requires a method that is both memory and computationally efficient. Wavelets provide an orthonormal basis to calculate implicit functions for quickly generating high-quality surfaces.

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BibTeX 

@article{Manson:2008:WAV,
  author  = {Josiah Manson and
             Guergana Petrova and
             Scott Schaefer},
  title   = {Streaming Surface Reconstruction Using Wavelets},
  journal = {Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of the Symposium on 
             Geometry Processing)},
  volume  = {27},
  number  = {5},
  year    = {2008},
  pages   = {1411--1420},
}

Abstract

We present a streaming method for reconstructing surfaces from large data sets generated by a laser range scanner using wavelets. Wavelets provide a localized, multiresolution representation of functions and this makes them ideal candidates for streaming surface reconstruction algorithms. We show how wavelets can be used to reconstruct the indicator function of a shape from a cloud of points with associated normals. Our method proceeds in several steps. We first compute a low-resolution approximation of the indicator function using an octree followed by a second pass that incrementally adds fine resolution details. The indicator function is then smoothed using a modified octree convolution step and contoured to produce the final surface. Due to the local, multiresolution nature of wavelets, our approach results in an algorithm over 10 times faster than previous methods and can process extremely large data sets in the order of several hundred million points in only an hour.

Supplemental

download zip wavelet_reconstruct.zip

Binaries and source code for my implementation of the surface reconstruction algorithm, some helper programs, and an example that runs a test dataset.

download html readme.html

Help on how to use the WaveletPipeRecon program and the file format specifications.

download zip patches.zip

Patches and source code converted to 64-bit Linux from Matt Johnson.

download ppt wavelet_reconstruct_SGP2008.ppt

This is the set of slides that I used in my presentation of the paper at the Symposium on Geometry Processing 2008.

License

The images, executables, and code supplied are from the web page http://josiahmanson.com. These materials are free to use for non-commercial purposes. Any works that use materials from this web page should acknowledge Josiah Manson and the paper Streaming Surface Reconstruction Using Wavelets. For commercial use, please contact Josiah Manson (josiahmanson@gmail.com).