title: Medial Meshes - A Compact and Accurate Representation of Medial Axis Transform.
abstract: The medial axis transform has long been known as an intrinsic shape representation supporting a variety of shape analysis and synthesis tasks. However, for a given shape, it is hard to obtain its faithful, concise and stable medial axis, which hinders the application of the medial axis. In this paper, we introduce the medial mesh, a new discrete representation of the medial axis. A medial mesh is a 2D simplicial complex coupled with a radius function that provides a piecewise linear approximation to the medial axis. We further present an effective algorithm for computing a concise and stable medial mesh for a given shape. Our algorithm is quantitatively driven by a shape approximation error metric, and progressively simplifies an initial medial mesh by iteratively contracting edges until the approximation error reaches a predefined threshold. We further demonstrate the superior efficiency and accuracy of our method over existing methods for medial axis simplification.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Yi-King
authors.initials: YK
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Yizhou
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Wenping
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang