3D reconstruction from planar contours: Analysis of heuristic tiling approaches

3D reconstruction from planar contours using the heuristic approach implements rules for three different phases of the process: correspondence, tiling and branching. We have analyzed existing algorithms and have been able to isolate their constituent pieces which allowed us to foresee many other possible (atomic) contributions. These pieces of algorithms were implemented independently and different mixes were compared using performance, geometrical and user-centered metrics. It was found that user-centered analysis are not reliable; that local criterion do not reflect on the whole model's quality and; that there is a tradeoff between performance and geometrical metrics. We could also find a particular mix of algorithm pieces that lead to a novel 3D reconstruction algorithm. Moreover, we have built an open source freeware framework where more mixes can be composed and where further testing and improvements could be carried out. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.