Segmentation of 3D range images using pyramidal data structures

Given a 3D range image of a scene containing multiple arbitrarily shaped objects, the authors segment the scene into homogeneous surface patches. A novel modular framework for the segmentation task is proposed. In the first module, over-segmentation is achieved using zeroth and first order local surface properties. The segmentation is then refined in the second module using high order surface representations dictated by the high level vision tasks. The procedure has been applied successfully to many range images, five of which are presented