Free-form 3D object reconstruction from range images

The increasing use of virtual object representations for several applications creates a need for fast and simple object digitizing systems. Range finders provide a convenient way to digitize solid objects and permit the accurate and fast scanning of an object shape without any probe contact. However, only one view of an object can be captured at once, and therefore, for most objects, several views have to be combined in order to obtain a description of the complete surface. We consider a digitizing system which captures and triangulates views of a real-world 3D object and finally registers and integrates them. An interactive 3D environment allows the operator to enter an estimate of the relative pose of the different views, which are then aligned automatically by geometric matching. A new fusion algorithm is proposed which takes advantage of the previous view matching to remove the redundant overlap area of two views and to fuse together their respective meshes by a gap-filling algorithm. The fusion algorithm integrates well in the whole reconstruction process and is simple and successful.