Partial intrinsic reflectional symmetry of 3D shapes
While many 3D objects exhibit various forms of global symmetries, prominent intrinsic symmetries which exist only on parts of an object are also well recognized. Such partial symmetries are often seen as more natural than a global one, even when the symmetric parts are under complex pose. We introduce an algorithm to extract partial intrinsic reflectional symmetries (PIRS) of a 3D shape. Given a closed 2-manifold mesh, we develop a voting scheme to obtain an intrinsic reflectional symmetry axis (IRSA) transform, which is a scalar field over the mesh that accentuates prominent IRSAs of the shape. We then extract a set of explicit IRSA curves on the shape based on a refined measure of local reflectional symmetry support along a curve. The iterative refinement procedure combines IRSA-induced region growing and region-constrained symmetry support refinement to improve accuracy and address potential issues arising from rotational symmetries in the shape. We show how the extracted IRSA curves can be incorporated into a conventional mesh segmentation scheme so that the implied symmetry cues can be utilized to obtain more meaningful results. We also demonstrate the use of IRSA curves for symmetry-driven part repair.

title: Feature-aligned shape texturing
abstract: The essence of a 3D shape can often be well captured by its salient feature curves. In this paper, we explore the use of salient curves in synthesizing intuitive, shape-revealing textures on surfaces. Our texture synthesis is guided by two principles: matching the direction of the texture patterns to those of the salient curves, and aligning the prominent feature lines in the texture to the salient curves exactly. We have observed that textures synthesized by these principles not only fit naturally to the surface geometry, but also visually reveal, even reinforce, the shape's essential characteristics. We call these feature-aligned shape texturing. Our technique is fully automatic, and introduces two novel technical components in vector-field-guided texture synthesis: an algorithm that orients the salient curves on a surface for constrained vector field generation, and a feature-to-feature texture optimization.

title: Quality encoding for tetrahedral mesh optimization
abstract: We define quality differential coordinates (QDC) for per-vertex encoding of the quality of a tetrahedral mesh. QDC measures the deviation of a mesh vertex from a position which maximizes the combined quality of the set of tetrahedra incident at that vertex. Our formulation allows the incorporation of different choices of element quality metrics into QDC construction to penalize badly shaped and inverted tetrahedra. We develop an algorithm for tetrahedral mesh optimization through energy minimization driven by QDC. The variational problem is solved efficiently and robustly using gradient flow based on a stable semi-implicit integration scheme. To ensure quality boundary of the resulting tetrahedral mesh, we propose a harmonic-guided optimization scheme which leads to consistent handling of both the interior and boundary tetrahedra.

title: A simple and stable feature-preserving smoothing method for contours-based reconstructed meshes
abstract: In this paper, we develop a new feature preserving smoothing method for the irregular and coarse meshes reconstructed from 2D contours. To make the feature detecting robust, a new detecting algorithm using the continuity among adjacent contours is proposed. Then the original mesh is subdivided adaptively according to the detected geometric features and smoothed with isotropic method. With the help of that, our algorithm obtains not only the feature-preserving result of anisotropic methods but also the simple and stable process of isotropic ones. After smoothing, the resolution of mesh can be resumed by moving the vertices in the original mesh to the positions of their corresponding vertices in the smoothed adaptive mesh. For smoothing of contours-based reconstructed meshes, experimental results show that our method can smooth the meshes satisfactorily and preserve their geometric features much better than other implemented methods.

title: An adaptive octree textures painting algorithm
abstract: Traditional Texturing using a set of two dimensional image maps is an established and widespread practice. However, it is difficult to parameterize a model in texture space, particularly with representations such as implicit surfaces, subdivision surfaces, and very dense or detailed polygonal meshes. Based on an adaptive octree textures definition, this paper proposes a direct reverse-projecting pixel-level painting approach which has less storage requirements to general octree textures maps. In addition, it depends on texture lookup in the GPU, which particularly lookup faster than the non-GPU program.

title: A Mesh Meaningful Segmentation Algorithm Using Skeleton and Minima-Rule
abstract: In this paper, a hierarchical shape decomposition algorithm is proposed, which integrates the advantages of skeleton-based and minima-rule-based meaningful segmentation algorithms. The method makes use of new geometrical and topological functions of skeleton to define initial cutting critical points, and then employs salient contours with negative minimal principal curvature values to determine natural final boundary curves among parts. And sufficient experiments have been carried out on many meshes, and shown that our framework can provide more reasonable perceptual results than single skeleton-based [8] or minima-rule-based [15] algorithm. In addition, our algorithm not only can divide a mesh of any genus into a collection of genus zero, but also partition level-of-detail meshes into similar parts.

title: 2.5D Visualisation of Overlapping Biological Networks
abstract: Biological data is often structured in the form of complex interconnected networks such as protein interaction and metabolic networks. In this paper, we investigate a new problem of visualising such overlapping biological networks. Two networks overlap if they share some nodes and edges. We present an approach for constructing visualisations of two overlapping networks, based on a restricted three dimensional representation. More specifically, we use three parallel two dimensional planes placed in three dimensions to represent overlapping networks: one for each network (the top and the bottom planes) and one for the overlapping part (in the middle plane). Our method aims to achieve both drawing aesthetics (or conventions) for each individual network, and highlighting the intersection part by them. Using three biological datasets, we evaluate our visualisation design with the aim to test whether overlapping networks can support the visual analysis of heterogeneous and yet interconnected networks.

title: Design, simulation and evaluation of kinematic alternatives for Insertable Robotic Effectors Platforms in Single Port Access Surgery
abstract: This paper presents the task specifications for designing a novel Insertable Robotic Effectors Platform (IREP) with integrated stereo vision and surgical intervention tools for Single Port Access Surgery (SPAS). This design provides a compact deployable mechanical architecture that may be inserted through a single Ø15 mm access port. Dexterous surgical intervention and stereo vision are achieved via the use of two snake-like continuum robots and two controllable CCD cameras. Simulations and dexterity evaluation of our proposed design are compared to several design alternatives with different kinematic arrangements. Results of these simulations show that dexterity is improved by using an independent revolute joint at the tip of a continuum robot instead of achieving distal rotation by transmission of rotation about the backbone of the continuum robot. Further, it is shown that designs with two robotic continuum robots as surgical arms have diminished dexterity if the bases of these arms are close to each other. This result justifies our design and points to ways of improving the performance of existing designs that use continuum robots as surgical arms.

title: Multiresolution Spatial Databases: Making Web-Based Spatial Applications Faster
abstract: Spatial data has now been used extensively in the Web environment, providing online customized maps and supporting map-based applications. The full potential of Web-based spatial applications, however, has yet to be achieved due to performance issues related to the large sizes and high complexity of spatial data. In this paper, we introduce a multiresolution approach to spatial data management and query processing such that the database server can choose spatial data at the right resolution level for different Web applications. One highly desirable property of the proposed approach is that the server-side processing cost and network traffic can be reduced when the level of resolution required by applications are low. Another advantage is that our approach pushes complex multiresolution structures and algorithms into the spatial database engine. That is, the developer of spatial Web applications needs not to be concerned with such complexity. This paper explains the basic idea, technical feasibility and applications of multiresolution spatial databases.

title: Test-Driven Component Integration with UML 2.0 Testing and Monitoring Profile
abstract: Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development methodology for achieving high reliability. However, the practice of TDD at the integration level is rare. In this paper, we propose a test-driven component integration approach with the support of UML 2.0 Testing and Monitoring Profile (U2TMP) that is also proposed in this paper. In our approach, automated integration-level test cases are specified using U2TMP before writing the glue-code that integrates components. U2TMP enhances UML 2.0 diagrams for specifying how test scenarios should be set up and how the integrated components are expected to interact under these scenarios. Test cases written in U2TMP can be automatically transformed into test artifacts that setup the test environment, generate test stimuli, and monitor the component interactions at runtime. These test cases serve as a guideline for writing the glue-code and a regression test- bed. With this approach, the software developers may produce glue-code of high reliability.

title: Surface k-NN Query Processing
abstract: A k-NN query finds the k nearest-neighbors of a given point from a point database. When it is sufficient to measure object distance using the Euclidian distance, the key to efficient k-NN query processing is to fetch and check the distances of a minimum number of points from the database. For many applications, such as vehicle movement along road networks or rover and animal movement along terrain surfaces, the distance is only meaningful when it is along a valid movement path. For this type of k-NN queries, the focus of efficient query processing is to minimize the cost of computing distances using the environment data (such as the road network data and the terrain data), which can be several orders of magnitude larger than that of the point data. Efficient processing of k-NN queries based on the Euclidian distance or the road network distance has been investigated extensively in the past. In this paper, we investigate the problem of surface k-NN query processing, where the distance is calculated from the shortest path along a terrain surface. This problem is very challenging, as the terrain data can be very large and the computational cost of finding shortest paths is very high. We propose an efficient solution based on multiresolution terrain models. Our approach eliminates the need of costly process of finding shortest paths by ranking objects using estimated lower and upper bounds of distance on multiresolution terrain models.