Optimal Triangulation by Means of Evolutionary Algorithms

Usually, three-dimensional objects cannot be scanned in one pass, but must be measured in a series of linear scans along parallel scan lines. Simple triangulation methods make use of the line structure of this kind of scans by keeping the scan lines fixed and calculating zig-zag paths between each pair of adjacent scan lines. The success of those strategies highly depends on the appropriate direction of the scan lines. Fig. 1 shows two triangulations of a cylinder with horizontal scan lines. While the left triangulation follows the scan lines, the right one was allowed to choose arbitrary triangles. The resulting surfaces (fig. 2) show how important the direction of the scan lines is.