A diffusion wavelet approach for 3-D model matching

Abstract

This paper proposes a new 3D shape retrieval approach based on diffusion wavelets which generalize wavelet analysis and associated signal processing techniques to functions on manifolds and graphs. Unlike current works on 3D matching, which are based either on the topological information of the model or its scatter point distribution information, this approach uses both information for more effective matching. Diffusion wavelets enable both global and local analyses on graphs, and can capture the topology of a surface with the diffusion map of its mesh representation. As a result, both multi-scale properties of the 3D geometric model and the topology among the meshes can be extracted for use in 3D geometric model retrieval. Tests using 3D benchmarks demonstrate that the approach based on diffusion wavelets is effective and performs better than those by spherical wavelet and spherical harmonics in 3D model matching. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.