Sphere image based triangular mesh segmentation

Extending digital image processing algorithms to the triangular mesh is always an important idea for triangular mesh processing. This paper presented a sphere image representation of triangular mesh and used it for triangular mesh segmentation. A sphere image is an image as well as a graphic, which make it easy to process triangular mesh with image processing approaches. In the presented approach segmentation of a triangular mesh could be done by simply applying commonly used image processing algorithms after a sphere image of the triangular mesh was created, which make triangular mesh segmentation could easily take advantage of advanced and mature image segmentation algorithms. Experimental results show that the presented approach can segment a triangular mesh well. It should be noted that the sphere image representation of a triangular mesh can not only be used for triangular mesh segmentation but more other applications.