A novel method for surface mesh smoothing: Applications in biomedical modeling

Abstract

In this paper, we present a surface-fitting based smoothing algorithm for discrete, general-purpose mesh models. The surface patch around a mesh vertex is defined in a local coordinate system and fitted with a quadratic polynomial function. An initial mesh smoothing is achieved by projecting each vertex onto the fitted surface. At each vertex of the initial mesh, the curvature is estimated and used to label the vertex as one of four types. The curvature-based vertex labeling, together with the curvature variation within a local region of a vertex, is utilized to adaptively smooth the mesh with fine features well preserved. Finally, three post-processing methods are adopted for mesh quality improvement. A number of realworld mesh models are tested to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our approach.