Accurate computation of the medial axis of a polyhedron

Abstract

We present an accurate and efficient algorithm to compute the internal Voronoi region and medial axis of a 3-D polyhedron. It uses exact arithmetic and representations for accurate computation of the medial axis. The sheets, seams, and junctions of the medial axis are represented as trimmed quadric surfaces, algebraic space curves, and points with algebraic coordinates, respectively. The algorithm works by recursively finding neighboring junctions along the seam curves. It uses spatial decomposition and linear programming to speed up the search step. We also present a new algorithm for analysis of the topology of an algebraic plane curve, which is the core of our medial axis algorithm. To speed up the computation, we have designed specialized algorithms for fast computation on implicit geometric structures. These include lazy evaluation based on multivariate Sturm sequences, fast resultant computation, curve topology analysis, and floating-point filters. The algorithm has been implemented and we highlight its performance on a number of examples.