Alignment, Merging and Hole Filling Experiments with 3D Range Scans

During the last decade, a number of systems and methods for the alignment, merging and hole filling of 3D range scans have been developed. However, a quantitative comparison of the accuracy of resulting 3D models is still missing. In order to make a fair comparison between these systems, we need to determine the parameter settings for each system that optimizes its performance. This work describes the experiments that determine the settings of three systems for the alignment and four systems for the merging of range scans. We also look at the hole filling capabilities of four different systems, with a total amount of six hole filling techniques. During the experiments one set of actual range scans (from a physical object) and one set of ‘virtual’ range scans (from a 3D model) were used.