Surface Partial Matching & Application to Archaeology

Partial matching is a fundamental problem in shape analysis, a field that is recently gaining an increasing importance in computer graphics. This paper proposes a novel approach to performing partial matching of surfaces. Given two surfaces MA and MB, our goal is to find the best match to MA within MB. The key idea of our approach is to integrate feature-point similarity and segment similarity. Specifically, we introduce a probabilistic framework in which the segmentation and the correspondences of neighboring feature points allow us to enhance or moderate our certainty of a feature-point similarity. The utility of our algorithm is demonstrated in the domain of archaeology, where digital archiving is becoming ever more widespread. In this domain, automatic matching can serve as a worthy alternative to the expensive and time-consuming manual procedure that is used today.