Classification of geometrical objects by integrating currents and functional data analysis. An application to a 3D database of Spanish child population

This paper focuses on the application of Discriminant Analysis to a set of geometrical objects (bodies) characterized by currents. A current is a relevant mathematical object to model geometrical data, like hypersurfaces, through integration of vector fields along them. As a consequence of the choice of a vector-valued Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS) as a test space to integrate hypersurfaces, it is possible to consider that hypersurfaces are embedded in this Hilbert space. This embedding enables us to consider classification algorithms of geometrical objects. A method to apply Functional Discriminant Analysis in the obtained vector-valued RKHS is given. This method is based on the eigenfunction decomposition of the kernel. So, the novelty of this paper is the reformulation of a size and shape classification problem in Functional Data Analysis terms using the theory of currents and vector-valued RKHS. This approach is applied to a 3D database obtained from an anthropometric survey of the Spanish child population with a potential application to online sales of children's wear

The Topology ToolKit

This system paper presents the Topology ToolKit (TTK), a software platform designed for topological data analysis in scientific visualization. TTK provides a unified, generic, efficient, and robust implementation of key algorithms for the topological analysis of scalar data, including: critical points, integral lines, persistence diagrams, persistence curves, merge trees, contour trees, Morse-Smale complexes, fiber surfaces, continuous scatterplots, Jacobi sets, Reeb spaces, and more. TTK is easily accessible to end users due to a tight integration with ParaView. It is also easily accessible to developers through a variety of bindings (Python, VTK/C++) for fast prototyping or through direct, dependence-free, C++, to ease integration into pre-existing complex systems. While developing TTK, we faced several algorithmic and software engineering challenges, which we document in this paper. In particular, we present an algorithm for the construction of a discrete gradient that complies to the critical points extracted in the piecewise-linear setting. This algorithm guarantees a combinatorial consistency across the topological abstractions supported by TTK, and importantly, a unified implementation of topological data simplification for multi-scale exploration and analysis. We also present a cached triangulation data structure, that supports time efficient and generic traversals, which self-adjusts its memory usage on demand for input simplicial meshes and which implicitly emulates a triangulation for regular grids with no memory overhead. Finally, we describe an original software architecture, which guarantees memory efficient and direct accesses to TTK features, while still allowing for researchers powerful and easy bindings and extensions. TTK is open source (BSD license) and its code, online documentation and video tutorials are available on TTK's website

Spectral analysis of Morse-Smale flows I: construction of the anisotropic spaces

We prove the existence of a discrete correlation spectrum for Morse-Smale flows acting on smooth forms on a compact manifold. This is done by constructing spaces of currents with anisotropic Sobolev regularity on which the Lie derivative has a discrete spectrum

A topological classification of convex bodies

The shape of homogeneous, generic, smooth convex bodies as described by the Euclidean distance with nondegenerate critical points, measured from the center of mass represents a rather restricted class M_C of Morse-Smale functions on S^2. Here we show that even M_C exhibits the complexity known for general Morse-Smale functions on S^2 by exhausting all combinatorial possibilities: every 2-colored quadrangulation of the sphere is isomorphic to a suitably represented Morse-Smale complex associated with a function in M_C (and vice versa). We prove our claim by an inductive algorithm, starting from the path graph P_2 and generating convex bodies corresponding to quadrangulations with increasing number of vertices by performing each combinatorially possible vertex splitting by a convexity-preserving local manipulation of the surface. Since convex bodies carrying Morse-Smale complexes isomorphic to P_2 exist, this algorithm not only proves our claim but also generalizes the known classification scheme in [36]. Our expansion algorithm is essentially the dual procedure to the algorithm presented by Edelsbrunner et al. in [21], producing a hierarchy of increasingly coarse Morse-Smale complexes. We point out applications to pebble shapes.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figure