Computing medial axes of generic 3D regions bounded by B-spline surfaces

A new approach is presented for computing the interior medial axes of generic regions in R-3 bounded by C-(4)-smooth parametric B-spline surfaces. The generic structure of the 3D medial axis is a set of smooth surfaces along with a singular set consisting of edge curves, branch curves, fin points and six junction points. In this work, the medial axis singular set is first computed directly from the B-spline representation using a collection of robust higher order techniques. Medial axis surfaces are computed as a time trace of the evolving self-intersection set of the boundary under the the eikonal (grassfire) flow, where the bounding surfaces are dynamically offset along the inward normal direction. The eikonal flow results in special transition points that create, modify or annihilate evolving curve fronts of the (self-) intersection set. The transition points are explicitly identified using the B-spline representation. Evolution of the (self-) intersection set is computed by adapting a method for tracking intersection curves of two different surfaces deforming over generalized offset vector fields. The proposed algorithm accurately computes connected surfaces of the medial axis as well its singular set. This presents a complete solution along with accurate topological structure. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.