Deformable surfaces: a free-form shape representation

This paper presents a technique for constructing shape representation from images using free- form deformable surfaces. We model an object as a closed surface that is deformed subject to attractive fields generated by input data points and features. Features affect the global shape of the surface while data points control its local shape. The authors' approach is used to segment objects even in cluttered or unstructured environment. The algorithm is general in that it makes few assumptions on the type of features, the nature of the data, and the type of objects. This paper presents results in a wide range of applications reconstruction of smooth isolated objects such as human faces, reconstruction of structured objects such as polyhedra, and segmentation of complex scenes with mutually occluding objects. We have successfully tested the algorithm using data from different sensors including gray-coding range finders and video cameras, using one or several images.