Locating the source of topological error in reconstructed 3D models

Although range scanning technology has offered great improvements to digital model creation in recent years, it has also introduced some new concerns. Specifically, recent work shows that topological errors such as tiny handles can significantly lower the overall quality of range-scanned models for down-stream applications (such as simplification and parameterization). In this paper we present our investigation into the source of this topological error in the range scanning process, and our methods to alleviate the error. We concentrated our investigation of the scanning process on: (1) signal noise or calibration error in the laser scanner (resulting in bad data points) and (2) error during the model reconstruction phase. We found that by modifying the surface reconstruction phase of the range scanning process, we were able to reduce the amount of topological noise in the resulting 3D model by up to 60 percent.