A varifold approach to surface approximation (Q1675110)

A \(d\)-varifold in an open set \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n\) is a non-negative Radon measure on \(\Omega\times G_{d,n}\), where \(G_{d,n}\) denotes the Grassmannian of \(d\)-dimensional vector subspaces of \(\mathbb R^n\). A rectifiable \(d\)-varifold \(V=v(M,\theta)\) in \(\Omega\) is a non-negative Radon measure on \(\Omega\times G_{d,n}\) of the form \(V=\theta\mathcal{H}^d_{|M}\otimes\delta_{T_xM}\), where \(M\) is a countably \(d\)-rectifiable with the approximate tangent space \(T_xM\) at \(x\), and \(\theta\) is a non-negative function with \(\theta>0\) \(\mathcal{H}^d\)-almost everywhere in \(M\). The mass of a general varifold \(V\) is the positive Radon measure defined by \(\|V\|(B)=V(\pi^{-1}(B))\) for every Borel set \(B\subset\Omega\), with \(\pi:\Omega\times G_{d,n}\to\Omega\). In particular, the mass of a \(d\)-rectifiable varifold \(V=v(M,\theta)\) is the measure \(\|V\|=\theta\mathcal{H}^d_{|M}\). The first variation of a \(d\)-varifold in \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n\) is the vector-valued distribution defined for any vector field \(X\) as \(\delta V(X)=\int_{}\operatorname{div}_PX(x)\mathrm{d}V(x,P)\). \(V\) is said to have a locally bounded first variation if \(|\delta V(X)|\leq c_K\sup\limits_K|X|\), where \(K\) is a fixed compact set in \(\Omega\) and \(c_K>0\). If \(\delta V=-H\|V\|+\delta V_s\), where \(H\in(L^1_{\text{loc}}(\Omega,\|V\|))^n\) and \(\delta V_s\) is singular with respect to \(\|V\|\), then the function \(H\) is called the generalized mean curvature vector. In this paper, the authors show that varifolds can be used to represent and analyze not only continuous shapes, like curves, surfaces, and rectifiable sets, but also discrete shapes, like point clouds, pixel-type surfaces, polyhedral meshes, etc. Varifolds associated with discrete shapes will be generically called discrete varifolds. The authors define the approximate mean curvature vector field \(H^V_{\rho,\xi,\varepsilon}(x)\) as the regularized first variation divided by the regularized mass, and they prove that if \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n\) is an open set and \(V=v(M,\theta)\) is a rectifiable \(d\)-varifold with locally bounded first variation in \(\Omega\), then for \(\|V\|\)-almost all \(x\in\Omega\) the approximate mean curvature \(H^V_{\rho,\xi,\varepsilon}(x)\) of \(V\) at \(x\) is convergent to \(H(x)\) when \(\varepsilon\to 0\). Finally, the authors provide some numerical tests for confirming the theoretical convergence properties of the approximate mean curvature as well as the effectiveness of the natural kernel pairs property.