A geometric approach to 3D object comparison

Abstract

Along with the development of 3D acquisition devices and methods and the increasing number of available 3D objects, new tools are necessary to automatically analyze, search and interpret these models. In this paper, we describe a novel geometric approach to 3D object comparison and analysis. To compare two objects geometrically, we first properly position and align the objects. After solving this pose estimation problem, we generate specific distance histograms that define a measure of the geometric similarity of the inspected objects. The geometric approach is very well-suited for structures with moderate variance, e.g. bones, fruits, etc. The strength of the approach is proven through the results of several tests that we performed on different data sets.