Graph Signal Processing for Geometric Data and Beyond: Theory and Applications

Geometric data acquired from real-world scenes,
e.g.
, 2D depth images, 3D point clouds, and 4D dynamic point clouds, have found a wide range of applications including immersive telepresence, autonomous driving, surveillance,
etc
. Due to irregular sampling patterns of most geometric data, traditional image/video processing methodologies are limited, while Graph Signal Processing (GSP)—a fast-developing field in the signal processing community—enables processing signals that reside on irregular domains and plays a critical role in numerous applications of geometric data from low-level processing to high-level analysis. To further advance the research in this field, we provide the first timely and comprehensive overview of GSP methodologies for geometric data in a unified manner by bridging the connections between geometric data and graphs, among the various geometric data modalities, and with spectral/nodal graph filtering techniques. We also discuss the recently developed Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and interpret the operation of these networks from the perspective of GSP. We conclude with a brief discussion of open problems and challenges.