Marching triangles: range image fusion for complex object modelling

A new surface based approach to implicit surface polygonisation is introduced in this paper. This is applied to the reconstruction of 3D surface models of complex objects from multiple range images. Geometric fusion of multiple range images into an implicit surface representation was presented in previous work. This paper introduces an efficient algorithm to reconstruct a triangulated model of a manifold implicit surface. A local 3D constraint is derived which defines the Delaunay surface triangulation of a set of points on a manifold surface in 3D space. The ‘Marching Triangles’ algorithm uses the local 3D constraint to reconstruct a Delaunay triangulation of an arbitrary topology manifold surface. Computational and representational costs are both a factor of 3-5 lower than previous volumetric approaches such as marching cubes.