Nonlinear Diffusion of Normals for Stable Detection of Ridges and Ravines on Range Images and Polygonal Models
Yutaka Ohtake, Alexander G. Belyaev · 2000
The main contribution of this work consists of developing a new surface smoothing method. The method preserves sharp variation points of the surface normals and is good for stable extraction of perceptually salient ridges and ravines. The method is based on a discrete nonlinear diffusion process (iterative nonlinear averaging) applied to the surface normals. We demonstrate applicability of the method to analysis and segmentation of range images (height fields) and polygonal surfaces. 1