A novel sketch-based 3D model retrieval approach based on skeleton

Since the skeleton represents the topology structure of the query sketch and 2D views of 3D model, this paper proposes a novel sketch-based 3D model retrieval algorithm which utilizes skeleton characteristics as the features to describe the object shape. Firstly, we propose advanced skeleton strength map (ASSM) algorithm to create the skeleton which computes the skeleton strength map by isotropic diffusion on the gradient vector field, selects critical points from the skeleton strength map and connects them by Kruskal's algorithm. Then, we propose histogram feature comparison algorithm which adopts the radii of the disks at skeleton points and the lengths of skeleton branches to extract the histogram feature, and compare the similarity between two skeletons using the histogram feature matrix of skeleton endpoints. Experiment results demonstrate that our approach which combines these two algorithms significantly outperforms several leading sketch-based retrieval approaches.