Implicit Surface Reconstruction via RBF Interpolation: A Review

Background: Implicit surface is a kind of surface modeling tool, which is widely used in point cloud reconstruction, deformation and fusion due to its advantages of good smoothness and Boolean operation. The most typical method is the surface reconstruction with Radial Basis Functions (RBF) under normal constraints. RBF has become one of the main methods of point cloud fitting because it has a strong mathematical foundation, an advantage of computation simplicity, and the ability of processing nonuniform points. Objective: Techniques and patents of implicit surface reconstruction interpolation with RBF are surveyed. Theory, algorithm, and application are discussed to provide a comprehensive summary for implicit surface reconstruction in RBF and Hermite Radial Basis Functions (HRBF) interpolation. Methods: RBF implicit surface reconstruction interpolation can be divided into RBF interpolation under the constraints of points and HRBF interpolation under the constraints of points and corresponding normals. Results: A total of 125 articles were reviewed, in which more than 30% were related to RBF in the last decade. The continuity properties and application fields of the popular global supported radial basis functions and compactly supported radial basis functions are analyzed. Different methods of RBF and HRBF implicit surface reconstruction are evaluated, and the challenges of these methods are discussed. Conclusion: In future work, implicit surface reconstruction via RBF and HRBF should be further studied in fitting accuracy, computation speed, and other fundamental problems. In addition, it is a more challenging but valuable research direction to construct a new RBF with both compact support and improved fitting accuracy.