Vietoris-rips complexes also provide topologically correct reconstructions of sampled shapes

We associate with each compact set X of Rn two real-valued functions cX and hX defined on R+ which provide two measures of how much the set X fails to be convex at a given scale. First, we show that, when P is a finite point set, an upper bound on cP(t) entails that the Rips complex of P at scale r collapses to the Cech complex of P at scale r for some suitable values of the parameters t and r. Second, we prove that, when P samples a compact set X, an upper bound on hX over some interval guarantees a topologically correct reconstruction of the shape X either with a Cech complex of P or with a Rips complex of P. Regarding the reconstruction with Cech complexes, our work compares well with previous approaches when X is a smooth set and surprisingly enough, even improves constants when X has a positive μ-reach. Most importantly, our work shows that Rips complexes can also be used to provide topologically correct reconstruction of shapes. This may be of some computational interest in high dimensions.