On the determination of convex bodies by translates of their projections (Q1364937)

It is well known that a convex body in the space \({\mathbf{E}}^{n}\) (\(n\geq 3\)) can be determined up to translations (homothetic transformations) by translates (homothetic images) of its orthogonal projections onto all the hyperplanes in \({\mathbf{E}}^{n}.\) This is no longer true, in general, if one takes projections on a restricted class of hyperplanes. In this paper the author considers only ``lateral projections'', i.e. orthogonal projections onto a set of hyperplanes containing a given line through the origin and filling \({\mathbf{E}}^{n}\). He finds sufficient conditions to guarantee that the translation equivalence of the lateral projections of two convex bodies implies the translation equivalence of the bodies themselves: i.e. it is enough that the projections lie on hyperplanes through a line the direction of which is regular for at least one of the bodies. The author also considers corresponding problem for homothetic transformations. As corollary he characterizes centrally symmetric convex bodies, convex bodies of constant width, and balls in terms of projections. The proofs use geometric arguments and also give stability results, i.e. estimates on the deviation of two convex bodies given a bound for the corresponding deviations for projections. Furthermore the author investigates to which degree of precision a convex body can be determined by a finite number of translates of its projections.