Shape spectra based view grouping for free-form objects

The concept of \shape spectrum" of an object view is introduced for constructing view aspects of free-form objects. The shape spectrum captures the shape characteristics of an object by aggregating the areas of the surfaces of the object at each value of the shape index. We derive a novel view representation based on shape spectral features and propose a general and powerful technique for organizing multiple views of objects of complex shape and geometry into compact and homogeneous clusters. Our view-grouping technique obviates the need for surface segmentation and edge detection. We demonstrate with experimental results on a database of 3,200 views of 10 objects that view aspects can be determined for sculpted objects easily and eeectively.