Computational topology for isotopic surface reconstruction

Abstract. New computational topology techniques are presented for surface reconstruction of 2-manifolds with boundary, while rigorous proofs have previously been limited to surfaces without boundary. This is done by an intermediate construction of the envelope (as defined herein) of the original surface. For any compact C 2 manifold M embedded in R 3, it is shown that its envelope is C 1,1. Then it is shown that there exists a piecewise linear (PL) subset of the reconstruction of the envelope that is ambient isotopic to M, whenever M is orientable. The emphasis of this paper is upon the formal mathematical proofs needed for these extensions. (Practical application examples have already been published in a companion paper.) Possible extensions to non-orientable manifolds are also discussed. The mathematical exposition relies heavily on known techniques from differential geometry and topology, but the specific new proofs are intended to be sufficiently specialized to prompt further algorithmic discoveries