3D shape representation: Transforming polygons into voxels

Abstract

We developed a method that transforms a polygonal representation of an object into a voxel representation on a 3D regular grid. By applying scale-space theory we derived expressions for an anti-aliased voxel representation of points, lines, and triangles. The algorithm ‘paints’ the triangles on the voxel grid and ‘fills’ the resulting surface. The method can be applied in 3D (medical) imaging and shape analysis in 3+1 dimensional scale-space.