3D model metrieval based on volumetric extended gaussian image and hierarchical self organizing map

In this paper, we introduce a novel shape signature, called Volumetric Extended Gaussian Image (VEGI). It captures the volumetric distribution of a 3D mesh model along the latitude-longitude direction without conventional pose normalization and is translation and scaling invariant. Rotation invariance is accomplished by further calculating the spherical harmonic transform of this directional distribution. Due to the completeness and orthonormality properties of spherical harmonics, the VEGI also provides multi-resolution description of a model so that a multi-level indexing scheme based on Hierarchical Self Organizing Map (HSOM) can be established to improve retrieval efficiency. Experimental results show that our retrieval architecture has high discriminative power and outperforms many existing methods.