Optimal Hierarchies for Quadrilateral Surfaces

[[abstract]]Multiresolution representation of quadrilateral surface approximation (MRQSA) is a useful representation for progressive graphics transmission in networks. Based on two requirements: (1) minimum mean square error and (2) fixed reduction ratio between levels, this paper first transforms the MRQSA problem into the problem of solving a sequence of near-Toeplitz tridiagonal linear systems. Employing the matrix perturbation technique, the MRQSA problem can be solved using about 24mn floating-point operations, i.e. linear time, if we are given a polygonal surface with (2m–1)×(2n–1) points. A numerical stability analysis is also given. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that such a linear algebra approach has been used for solving the MRQSA problem. Some experimental results are carried out to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method.