Pyramidal simplicial complexes

Abstract

We propose a new model for representing a hypersurface describing a scalar field in any dimension at different levels of detail. The model is based on a sequence of domain decompositions into simplicial complexes and integrates the modeling characteristics of simplicial complexes with the versatility of a multilevel description. We present a data structure and algorithms for efficiently encoding and manipulating such model. The proposed data structure is specific for applications in which a `non-topological' representation is required. Such applications include volumetric data visualization and geometric query processing.