Curvature‐based nonrigid motion analysis from three‐dimensional correspondences

We describe a curvature‐based approach for estimating nonrigid motion of moving surfaces. We deal with conformal motion, which can be characterized by stretching of the surface. At each point, this stretching is equal in all directions but different for different points. The stretching function can be defined as additional (with global translation and rotation) motion parameter. We present a new algorithm for local stretching recovery from Gaussian curvature, based on polynomial (linear and quadratic) approximations of the stretching function. It requires point correspondences between time frames but not the complete knowledge of nonrigid transformation. Experiments on simulated and real data are performed to illustrate performance and accuracy of derived algorithms. Noise sensitivity of the algorithm is also evaluated using Gaussian noise on simulated data.©1993 John Wiley & Sons Inc