Framework for 3D object hole filling

In this paper we address the problem of hole filling in a point cloud of 3D object. Even with most popular 3D scanning devices like Microsoft Kinect and Time of Flight (ToF) cameras, occlusions during the scanning process result in occurrence of missing regions or holes in 3D data. We propose a framework for hole filling in a point cloud of 3D object using Riemannian metric tensor and Christoffel symbols as a set of geometric features, which capture the inherent geometry of the 3D object. The framework involves detection and extraction of the boundary points surrounding the hole, decomposition of boundary points into basic shapes and selective surface interpolation to fill the hole. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed method on point clouds with different complexities and sizes for both synthetically generated holes and real missing regions during the capturing process on 3D models of heritage sites.