Matching 3-D objects using surface descriptions

A method is developed to extract important curves, corresponding to physical boundaries of objects, from a range image. It is shown how to infer, from these curves, a segmentation of the scene into surface patches, and how to use these descriptions to establish correspondences between two scenes. In a first step, labeled curves corresponding to jump boundaries, creases, and limbs of objects are grouped into boundaries of regions. Each region is therefore described by its boundaries and by a polynomial approximation, which allows each path individually and also the complete scene to be reconstructed. In a second step, objects (or partial objects) are inferred from surface patches, and then two range images are at this partial object level. Graphs of objects are matched using a best-first search under three types of constraints: unary constraints between corresponding nodes, binary constraints between corresponding linked pairs of nodes, and constraints imposed by the computed geometric transformation. Substantial partial occlusion is allowed. The generality and robustness of this approach is illustrated by several examples