Non-Rigid Range-Scan Alignment Using Thin-Plate Splines

We present a non-rigid alignment algorithm for aligning high-resolution range data in the presence of lowfrequency deformations, such as those caused by scanner calibration error. Traditional iterative closest points (ICP) algorithms, which rely on rigid-body alignment, fail in these cases because the error appears as a non-rigid warp in the data. Our algorithm combines the robustness and efficiency of ICP with the expressiveness of thin-plate splines to align high-resolution scanned data accurately, such as scans from the Digital Michelangelo Project [14]. This application is distinguished from previous uses of the thin-plate spline by the fact that the resolution and size of warping are several orders of magnitude smaller than the extent of the mesh, thus requiring especially precise feature correspondence.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: 3DPVT
• Authors: Benedict J. Brown, Szymon Rusinkiewicz
• Keywords: 3DPVT 2004, Non-rigid Alignment Algorithm, Scanner Calibration Error, Thin-plate Spline, Visualization