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.