Consistent Density Scanning and Information Extraction From Point Clouds of Building Interiors

Over the last decade, 3D range scanning systems have improved considerably enabling the designers to capture large and complex domains such as building interiors. The captured point cloud is processed to extract specific Building Information Models, where the main research challenge is to simultaneously handle huge and cohesive point clouds representing multiple objects, occluded features and vast geometric diversity. These domain characteristics increase the data complexities and thus make it difficult to extract accurate information models from the captured point clouds. The research work presented in this thesis improves the information extraction pipeline with the development of novel algorithms for consistent density scanning and information extraction automation for building interiors. A restricted density-based, scan planning methodology computes the number of scans to cover large linear domains while ensuring desired data density and reducing rigorous post-processing of data sets. The research work further develops effective algorithms to transform the captured data into information models in terms of domain features (layouts), meaningful data clusters (segmented data) and specific shape attributes (occluded boundaries) having better practical utility. Initially, a direct point-based simplification and layout extraction algorithm is presented that can handle the cohesive point clouds by adaptive simplification and an accurate layout extraction approach without generating an intermediate model. Further, three information extraction algorithms are presented that transforms point clouds into meaningful clusters. The novelty of these algorithms lies in the fact that they work directly on point clouds by exploiting their inherent characteristic. First a rapid data clustering algorithm is presented to quickly identify objects in the scanned scene using a robust hue, saturation and value (H S V) color model for better scene understanding. A hierarchical clustering algorithm is developed to handle the vast geometric diversity ranging from planar walls to complex freeform objects. The shape adaptive parameters help to segment planar as well as complex interiors whereas combining color and geometry based segmentation criterion improves clustering reliability and identifies unique clusters from geometrically similar regions. Finally, a progressive scan line based, side-ratio constraint algorithm is presented to identify occluded boundary data points by investigating their spatial discontinuity

The persistent cosmic web and its filamentary structure II: Illustrations

The recently introduced discrete persistent structure extractor (DisPerSE, Soubie 2010, paper I) is implemented on realistic 3D cosmological simulations and observed redshift catalogues (SDSS); it is found that DisPerSE traces equally well the observed filaments, walls, and voids in both cases. In either setting, filaments are shown to connect onto halos, outskirt walls, which circumvent voids. Indeed this algorithm operates directly on the particles without assuming anything about the distribution, and yields a natural (topologically motivated) self-consistent criterion for selecting the significance level of the identified structures. It is shown that this extraction is possible even for very sparsely sampled point processes, as a function of the persistence ratio. Hence astrophysicists should be in a position to trace and measure precisely the filaments, walls and voids from such samples and assess the confidence of the post-processed sets as a function of this threshold, which can be expressed relative to the expected amplitude of shot noise. In a cosmic framework, this criterion is comparable to friend of friend for the identifications of peaks, while it also identifies the connected filaments and walls, and quantitatively recovers the full set of topological invariants (Betti numbers) {\sl directly from the particles} as a function of the persistence threshold. This criterion is found to be sufficient even if one particle out of two is noise, when the persistence ratio is set to 3-sigma or more. The algorithm is also implemented on the SDSS catalogue and used to locat interesting configurations of the filamentary structure. In this context we carried the identification of an ``optically faint'' cluster at the intersection of filaments through the recent observation of its X-ray counterpart by SUZAKU. The corresponding filament catalogue will be made available online.Comment: A higher resolution version is available at http://www.iap.fr/users/sousbie together with complementary material (movie and data). Submitted to MNRA

Hierarchical shape-based surface reconstruction for dense multi-view stereo

International audienceThe recent widespread availability of urban imagery has lead to a growing demand for automatic modeling from multiple images. However, modern image-based modeling research has focused either on highly detailed reconstructions of mostly small objects or on human-assisted simplified modeling. This paper presents a novel algorithm which automatically outputs a simplified, segmented model of a scene from a set of calibrated input images, capturing its essential geometric features. Our approach combines three successive steps. First, a dense point cloud is created from sparse depth maps computed from the input images. Then, shapes are robustly extracted from this set of points. Finally, a compact model of the scene is built from a spatial subdivision induced by these structures: this model is a global minimum of an energy accounting for the visibility of the final surface. The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated through several results on both synthetic and real data sets, illustrating the various benefits of our algorithm, its robustness and its relevance for architectural scenes

On Curved Simplicial Elements and Best Quadratic Spline Approximation for Hierarchical Data Representation

We present a method for hierarchical data approximation using curved quadratic simplicial elements for domain decomposition. Scientific data defined over two- or three-dimensional domains typically contain boundaries and discontinuities that are to be preserved and approximated well for data analysis and visualization. Curved simplicial elements make possible a better representation of curved geometry, domain boundaries, and discontinuities than simplicial elements with non-curved edges and faces. We use quadratic basis functions and compute best quadratic simplicial spline approximations that are $C^0$-continuous everywhere except where field discontinuities occur whose locations we assume to be given. We adaptively refine a simplicial approximation by identifying and bisecting simplicial elements with largest errors. It is possible to store multiple approximation levels of increasing quality. Our method can be used for hierarchical data processing and visualization