Automatic Hole-Filling of Triangular Meshes Using Local Radial Basis Function

Creating models of real objects is a complex task for which the use of traditional modeling techniques has proven to be difficult. To solve some of these problems, laser rangefinders are frequently used to sample an object´s surface from several viewpoints resulting in a set of range images that are registered and integrated into a final triangulated model. In practice, due to surface reflectance properties, occlusions and accessibility limitations, certain areas of the object´s surface are usually not sampled, leaving holes which create undesirable artifacts in the integrated model. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm for the automatic hole-filling of triangulated models. The algorithm starts by locating hole boundary regions. A hole consists of a closed path of edges of boundary triangles that have at least an edge, which is not shared with any other triangle. The edge of the hole is then fitted with a b-spline where the average variation of the torsion of the b-spline approximation is calculated. Using a simple threshold of the average variation of the torsion along the edge, one can automatically classify real holes from man-made holes. Following this classification process, we then use an automated version of a radial basis function interpolator to fill the inside of the hole using neighboring edges. Excellent experimental results are presented.