Globally constrained deformable models for 3D object reconstruction

To achieve geometric reconstruction from 3D datasets two complementary approaches have been widely used. On one hand, the deformable model framework locally applies forces to fit the data. On the other hand, the non-rigid registration framework computes a global transformation minimizing the distance between a template and the data. We first show that applying a global transformation on a surface template, is equivalent to applying certain global forces on a deformable model. Second, we propose a scheme which combines the registration and free-form deformation. This globally constrained deformation scheme allows us to control the amount of deformation from the reference shape with a single parameter. Finally, we propose a general algorithm for performing model-based reconstruction in a robust and accurate manner. Examples on both range data and medical images are used to illustrate and validate the globally constrained deformation framework. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.