Mesh simplification with average planes for 3-D image

Mesh simplification is a very important stage in 3D image construction. In most cases, a model consists of many triangles. It is difficult to render, transmit and store the model data. This paper proposes a mesh simplification method based on computing the average planes combined by using the adjacent vertices of every edge and all two-edge vertices. We compute the RMS (root mean square) distance error of all these vertices from the edge to the average plane. Two RMS error values (the edge length and a penalty item) are combined to produce the final error metric. According to this value, the curvature of the facet can be decided. The edge with the lowest error metric is selected to be collapsed. A model without a boundary and two models with a boundary are used to test the efficiency of the proposed method