On the Stability of Functional Maps and Shape Difference Operators

In this paper, we provide stability guarantees for two frameworks that are based on the notion of functional maps—the framework of shape difference operators and the one of analyzing and visualizing the deformations between shapes. We consider two types of perturbations in our analysis: one is on the input shapes and the other is on the change in scale. In theory, we formulate and justify the robustness that has been observed in practical implementations of those frameworks. Inspired by our theoretical results, we propose a pipeline for constructing shape difference operators on point clouds and show numerically that the results are robust and informative. In particular, we show that both the shape difference operators and the derived areas of highest distortion are stable with respect to changes in shape representation and change of scale. Remarkably, this is in contrast with the well‐known instability of the eigenfunctions of the Laplace–Beltrami operator computed on point clouds compared to those obtained on triangle meshes.     

Differential Representations for Mesh Processing

Surface representation and processing is one of the key topics in computer graphics and geometric modeling, since it greatly affects the range of possible applications. In this paper we will present recent advances in geometry processing that are related to the Laplacian processing framework and differential representations. This framework is based on linear operators defined on polygonal meshes, and furnishes a variety of processing applications, such as shape approximation and compact representation, mesh editing, watermarking and morphing. The core of the framework is the definition of differential coordinates and new bases for efficient mesh geometry representation, based on the mesh Laplacian operator.     

Modeling Polyhedral Meshes with Affine Maps

We offer a framework for editing and modeling of planar meshes, focusing on planar quad, and hexagonal‐dominant meshes, which are held in high demand in the field of architectural design. Our framework manipulates these meshes by affine maps that are assigned per‐face, and which naturally ensure the planarity of these faces throughout the process, resulting in a linear subspace of compatible planar deformations for any given mesh. Our modeling metaphors include classical handle‐based editing, mesh interpolation, and shape‐space exploration, all of which allow for an intuitive way to produce new polyhedral and near‐polyhedral meshes by editing.     

A parametric analysis of discrete Hamiltonian functional maps

In this paper we develop an in-depth theoretical investigation of the discrete Hamiltonian eigenbasis, which remains quite unexplored in the geometry processing community. This choice is supported by the fact that Dirichlet eigenfunctions can be equivalently computed by defining a Hamiltonian operator, whose potential energy and localization region can be controlled with ease. We vary with continuity the potential energy and study the relationship between the Dirichlet Laplacian and the Hamiltonian eigenbases with the functional map formalism. We develop a global analysis to capture the asymptotic behavior of the eigenpairs. We then focus on their local interactions, namely the veering patterns that arise between proximal eigenvalues. Armed with this knowledge, we are able to track the eigenfunctions in all possible configurations, shedding light on the nature of the functional maps. We exploit the Hamiltonian-Dirichlet connection in a partial shape matching problem, obtaining state of the art results, and provide directions where our theoretical findings could be applied in future research.     

3D anatomical shape atlas construction using mesh quality preserved deformable models

3D anatomical shape atlas construction has been extensively studied in medical image analysis research, owing to its importance in model-based image segmentation, longitudinal studies and populational statistical analysis, etc. Among multiple steps of 3D shape atlas construction, establishing anatomical correspondences across subjects, i.e., surface registration, is probably the most critical but challenging one. Adaptive focus deformable model (AFDM) [1] was proposed to tackle this problem by exploiting cross-scale geometry characteristics of 3D anatomy surfaces. Although the effectiveness of AFDM has been proved in various studies, its performance is highly dependent on the quality of 3D surface meshes, which often degrades along with the iterations of deformable surface registration (the process of correspondence matching). In this paper, we propose a new framework for 3D anatomical shape atlas construction. Our method aims to robustly establish correspondences across different subjects and simultaneously generate high-quality surface meshes without removing shape details. Mathematically, a new energy term is embedded into the original energy function of AFDM to preserve surface mesh qualities during deformable surface matching. More specifically, we employ the Laplacian representation to encode shape details and smoothness constraints. An expectation–maximization style algorithm is designed to optimize multiple energy terms alternatively until convergence. We demonstrate the performance of our method via a set of diverse applications, including a population of sparse cardiac MRI slices with 2D labels, 3D high resolution CT cardiac images and rodent brain MRIs with multiple structures. The constructed shape atlases exhibit good mesh qualities and preserve fine shape details. The constructed shape atlases can further benefit other research topics such as segmentation and statistical analysis.     

Accurate and Efficient Computation of Laplacian Spectral Distances and Kernels

This paper introduces the Laplacian spectral distances, as a function that resembles the usual distance map, but exhibits properties (e.g. smoothness, locality, invariance to shape transformations) that make them useful to processing and analysing geometric data. Spectral distances are easily defined through a filtering of the Laplacian eigenpairs and reduce to the heat diffusion, wave, biharmonic and commute‐time distances for specific filters. In particular, the smoothness of the spectral distances and the encoding of local and global shape properties depend on the convergence of the filtered eigenvalues to zero. Instead of applying a truncated spectral approximation or prolongation operators, we propose a computation of Laplacian distances and kernels through the solution of sparse linear systems. Our approach is free of user‐defined parameters, overcomes the evaluation of the Laplacian spectrum and guarantees a higher approximation accuracy than previous work.     

Discrete Laplace–Beltrami operators for shape analysis and segmentation

Shape analysis plays a pivotal role in a large number of applications, ranging from traditional geometry processing to more recent 3D content management. In this scenario, spectral methods are extremely promising as they provide a natural library of tools for shape analysis, intrinsically defined by the shape itself. In particular, the eigenfunctions of the Laplace–Beltrami operator yield a set of real-valued functions that provide interesting insights in the structure and morphology of the shape. In this paper, we first analyze different discretizations of the Laplace–Beltrami operator (geometric Laplacians, linear and cubic FEM operators) in terms of the correctness of their eigenfunctions with respect to the continuous case. We then present the family of segmentations induced by the nodal sets of the eigenfunctions, discussing its meaningfulness for shape understanding.     

Sparse Approximation of 3D Meshes Using the Spectral Geometry of the Hamiltonian Operator

The discrete Laplace operator is ubiquitous in spectral shape analysis, since its eigenfunctions are provably optimal in representing smooth functions defined on the surface of the shape. Indeed, subspaces defined by its eigenfunctions have been utilized for shape compression, treating the coordinates as smooth functions defined on the given surface. However, surfaces of shapes in nature often contain geometric structures for which the general smoothness assumption may fail to hold. At the other end, some explicit mesh compression algorithms utilize the order by which vertices that represent the surface are traversed, a property which has been ignored in spectral approaches. Here, we incorporate the order of vertices into an operator that defines a novel spectral domain. We propose a method for representing 3D meshes using the spectral geometry of the Hamiltonian operator, integrated within a sparse approximation framework. We adapt the concept of a potential function from quantum physics and incorporate vertex ordering information into the potential, yielding a novel data-dependent operator. The potential function modifies the spectral geometry of the Laplacian to focus on regions with finer details of the given surface. By sparsely encoding the geometry of the shape using the proposed data-dependent basis, we improve compression performance compared to previous results that use the standard Laplacian basis and spectral graph wavelets.     

Approximating Gradients for Meshes and Point Clouds via Diffusion Metric

The gradient of a function defined on a manifold is perhaps one of the most important differential objects in data analysis. Most often in practice, the input function is available only at discrete points sampled from the underlying manifold, and the manifold is approximated by either a mesh or simply a point cloud. While many methods exist for computing gradients of a function defined over a mesh, computing and simplifying gradients and related quantities such as critical points, of a function from a point cloud is non-trivial.
In this paper, we initiate the investigation of computing gradients under a different metric on the manifold from the original natural metric induced from the ambient space. Specifically, we map the input manifold to the eigenspace spanned by its Laplacian eigenfunctions, and consider the so-called diffusion distance metric associated with it. We show the relation of gradient under this metric with that under the original metric. It turns out that once the Laplace operator is constructed, it is easier to approximate gradients in the eigenspace for discrete inputs (especially point clouds) and it is robust to noises in the input function and in the underlying manifold. More importantly, we can easily smooth the gradient field at different scales within this eigenspace framework. We demonstrate the use of our new eigen-gradients with two applications: approximating / simplifying the critical points of a function, and the Jacobi sets of two input functions (which describe the correlation between these two functions), from point clouds data.     

A Projective Framework for Polyhedral Mesh Modelling

We present a novel framework for polyhedral mesh editing with face‐based projective maps that preserves planarity by definition. Such meshes are essential in the field of architectural design and rationalization. By using homogeneous coordinates to describe vertices, we can parametrize the entire shape space of planar‐preserving deformations with bilinear equations. The generality of this space allows for polyhedral geometric processing methods to be conducted with ease. We demonstrate its usefulness in planar‐quadrilateral mesh subdivision, a resulting multi‐resolution editing algorithm, and novel shape‐space exploration with prescribed transformations. Furthermore, we show that our shape space is a discretization of a continuous space of conjugate‐preserving projective transformation fields on surfaces. Our shape space directly addresses planar‐quad meshes, on which we put a focus, and we further show that our framework naturally extends to meshes with faces of more than four vertices as well.     

FARM: Functional Automatic Registration Method for 3D Human Bodies

We introduce a new method for non-rigid registration of 3D human shapes. Our proposed pipeline builds upon a given parametric model of the human, and makes use of the functional map representation for encoding and inferring shape maps throughout the registration process. This combination endows our method with robustness to a large variety of nuisances observed in practical settings, including non-isometric transformations, downsampling, topological noise and occlusions; further, the pipeline can be applied invariably across different shape representations (e.g. meshes and point clouds), and in the presence of (even dramatic) missing parts such as those arising in real-world depth sensing applications. We showcase our method on a selection of challenging tasks, demonstrating results in line with, or even surpassing, state-of-the-art methods in the respective areas.     

Recent Trends,Applications, and Perspectives in 3D Shape Similarity Assessment

The recent introduction of 3D shape analysis frameworks able to quantify the deformation of a shape into another in terms of the variation of real functions yields a new interpretation of the 3D shape similarity assessment and opens new perspectives. Indeed, while the classical approaches to similarity mainly quantify it as a numerical score, map‐based methods also define (dense) shape correspondences. After presenting in detail the theoretical foundations underlying these approaches, we classify them by looking at their most salient features, including the kind of structure and invariance properties they capture, as well as the distances and the output modalities according to which the similarity between shapes is assessed and returned. We also review the usage of these methods in a number of 3D shape application domains, ranging from matching and retrieval to annotation and segmentation. Finally, the most promising directions for future research developments are discussed.     

Smooth Shape‐Aware Functions with Controlled Extrema

Functions that optimize Laplacian‐based energies have become popular in geometry processing, e.g. for shape deformation, smoothing, multiscale kernel construction and interpolation. Minimizers of Dirichlet energies, or solutions of Laplace equations, are harmonic functions that enjoy the maximum principle, ensuring no spurious local extrema in the interior of the solved domain occur. However, these functions are only C⁰ at the constrained points, which often causes smoothness problems. For this reason, many applications optimize higher‐order Laplacian energies such as biharmonic or triharmonic. Their minimizers exhibit increasing orders of continuity but lose the maximum principle and show oscillations. In this work, we identify characteristic artifacts caused by spurious local extrema, and provide a framework for minimizing quadratic energies on manifolds while constraining the solution to obey the maximum principle in the solved region. Our framework allows the user to specify locations and values of desired local maxima and minima, while preventing any other local extrema. We demonstrate our method on the smoothness energies corresponding to popular polyharmonic functions and show its usefulness for fast handle‐based shape deformation, controllable color diffusion, and topologically‐constrained data smoothing.     

Shape‐from‐Operator: Recovering Shapes from Intrinsic Operators

We formulate the problem of shape‐from‐operator (SfO), recovering an embedding of a mesh from intrinsic operators defined through the discrete metric (edge lengths). Particularly interesting instances of our SfO problem include: shape‐from‐Laplacian, allowing to transfer style between shapes; shape‐from‐difference operator, used to synthesize shape analogies; and shape‐from‐eigenvectors, allowing to generate ‘intrinsic averages’ of shape collections. Numerically, we approach the SfO problem by splitting it into two optimization sub‐problems: metric‐from‐operator (reconstruction of the discrete metric from the intrinsic operator) and embedding‐from‐metric (finding a shape embedding that would realize a given metric, a setting of the multidimensional scaling problem). We study numerical properties of our problem, exemplify it on several applications, and discuss its imitations.     

Progressive 3D shape segmentation using online learning

In this article, we propose a progressive 3D shape segmentation method, which allows users to guide the segmentation with their interactions, and does segmentation gradually driven by their intents. More precisely, we establish an online framework for interactive 3D shape segmentation, without any boring collection preparation or training stages. That is, users can collect the 3D shapes while segment them, and the segmentation will become more and more precise as the accumulation of the shapes.Our framework uses Online Multi-Class LPBoost (OMCLP) to train/update a segmentation model progressively, which includes several Online Random forests (ORFs) as the weak learners. Then, it performs graph cuts optimization to segment the 3D shape by using the trained/updated segmentation model as the optimal data term. There exist three features of our framework. Firstly, the segmentation model can be trained gradually during the collection of the shapes. Secondly, the segmentation results can be refined progressively until users’ requirements are met. Thirdly, the segmentation model can be updated incrementally without retraining all shapes when users add new shapes. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.     

3-D Reconstruction of Shaded Objects from Multiple Images Under Unknown Illumination

We propose a variational algorithm to jointly estimate the shape, albedo, and light configuration of a Lambertian scene from a collection of images taken from different vantage points. Our work can be thought of as extending classical multi-view stereo to cases where point correspondence cannot be established, or extending classical shape from shading to the case of multiple views with unknown light sources. We show that a first naive formalization of this problem yields algorithms that are numerically unstable, no matter how close the initialization is to the true geometry. We then propose a computational scheme to overcome this problem, resulting in provably stable algorithms that converge to (local) minima of the cost functional. We develop a new model that explicitly enforces positivity in the light sources with the assumption that the object is Lambertian and its albedo is piecewise constant and show that the new model significantly improves the accuracy and robustness relative to existing approaches.     

Wavelet‐based Heat Kernel Derivatives: Towards Informative Localized Shape Analysis

In this paper, we propose a new construction for the Mexican hat wavelets on shapes with applications to partial shape matching. Our approach takes its main inspiration from the well‐established methodology of diffusion wavelets. This novel construction allows us to rapidly compute a multi‐scale family of Mexican hat wavelet functions, by approximating the derivative of the heat kernel. We demonstrate that this leads to a family of functions that inherit many attractive properties of the heat kernel (e.g. local support, ability to recover isometries from a single point, efficient computation). Due to its natural ability to encode high‐frequency details on a shape, the proposed method reconstructs and transfers ‐functions more accurately than the Laplace‐Beltrami eigenfunction basis and other related bases. Finally, we apply our method to the challenging problems of partial and large‐scale shape matching. An extensive comparison to the state‐of‐the‐art shows that it is comparable in performance, while both simpler and much faster than competing approaches.