Anisotropic Diffusion on Curved Surfaces

Abstract: We demonstrate a method for filtering images defined on curved surfaces embedded in 3D. Applications are noise removal and the creation of artistic effects. Our approach relies on in-surface diffusion: we formulate Weickert's edge/coherence enhancing diffusion models in a surface-intrinsic way. These diffusion processes are anisotropic and the equations depend non-linearly on the data. The surface-intrinsic equations are dealt with the closest point method, a technique for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) on general surfaces. The resulting algorithm has a very simple structure: we merely alternate a time step of a 3D analog of the in-surface PDE in a narrow 3D band containing the surface with a reconstruction of the surface function. Surfaces are represented by a closest point function. This representation is flexible and the method can treat very general surfaces. Experimental results include image filtering on smooth surfaces, open surfaces, and general triangulated surfaces.