Towards Unsupervised Segmentation of Semi-rigid Low-Resolution Molecular Surfaces

In this paper, we study a particular type of surface segmentation problem motivated by molecular biology applications. In particular, two input surfaces are given, coarsely modeling two different conformations of a molecule undergoing a semi-rigid deformation. The molecule consists of two subunits that move in a roughly rigid manner. The goal is to segment the input surfaces into these semi-rigid subcomponents. The problem is closely related to non-rigid surface registration problems, although considering only a special type of deformation that exists commonly in macromolecular movements (such as the popular hinge motion). We present and implement an efficient paradigm for this problem, which combines several existing and new ideas. We demonstrate the performance of our new algorithm by some preliminary experimental results in segmenting low-resolution molecular surfaces.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: GMP
• Authors: Yusu Wang, Leonidas J. Guibas
• Keywords: GMP 2006, Input Surfaces, Semi-rigid Deformation, Surface Segmentation Problem