A contour-based segmentation algorithm for triangle meshes in 3D space

• We propose the first contour-based mesh segmentation algorithm.
• We introduce the concept of relaxed convexity in mesh segmentation.
• We introduce the cumulative area histogram to identify noisy meshes, as well as to calculate the number of mesh segments.

This paper introduces the first contour-based mesh segmentation algorithm that we may find in the literature, which is inspired in the edge-based segmentation techniques used in image analysis, as opposite to region-based segmentation techniques. Its leading idea is to firstly find the contour of each region, and then to identify and collect all of its inner triangles. The encountered mesh regions correspond to ups and downs, which do not need to be strictly convex nor strictly concave, respectively. These regions, called relaxedly convex regions (or saliences) and relaxedly concave regions (or recesses), produce segmentations that are less-sensitive to noise and, at the same time, are more intuitive from the human point of view; hence it is called human perception-oriented (HPO) segmentation. Besides, and unlike the current state-of-the-art in mesh segmentation, the existence of these relaxed regions makes the algorithm suited to both nonfreeform and freeform objects.

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