Exploiting the scanning sequence for automatic registration of large sets of range maps

Range map registration is still the most time consuming phase in the processing of 3D scanning data. This is
because real scanning sets are composed of hundreds of range maps and their registration is still partially manual.
We propose a new method to manage complex scan sets acquired by following a regular scanner pose pattern. Our
goal is to define an initial adjacency graph by coarsely aligning couples of range maps that we know are partially
overlapping thanks to the adopted scanning strategy. For a pair of partially overlapping range maps, our iterative
solution locates pairs of correspondent vertices through the computation of a regular n×n kernel which takes into
account vertex normals and is defined in the 2D space of the range map (represented in implicit 2D format rather
than as a triangle mesh in 3D space). The shape-characterization kernel and the metrics defined give a sufficiently
accurate shape matching, which has been proven to fit well the requirements of automatic registration. This initial
set of adjacency arcs can then be augmented by the automatic identification of the other significant arcs, by
adopting a criterion based on approximate range map overlap computation. With respect to the solutions present
in literature, the simplifications and assumptions adopted make our solution specifically oriented to complex 3D
scanning campaigns (hundreds of range maps). The proposed method can coarsely register range maps in parallel
with the acquisition activity and this is a valuable help in assessing on site the completeness of the sampling of
large objects.

@Article\{PFCMS05,
  author       = "Pingi, Paolo and Fasano, Andrea and Cignoni, Paolo and Montani, Claudio and Scopigno, Roberto",
  title        = "Exploiting the scanning sequence for automatic registration of large sets of range maps",
  journal      = "Computer Graphics Forum",
  number       = "3",
  volume       = "24",
  pages        = "517-526",
  year         = "2005",
  url          = "http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/Publications/2005/PFCMS05"
}