• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.411-417
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• 2005

We present a method to reconstruct a canal surface from a point cloud (a set of unorganized points). A canal surface is defined as a swept surface of a moving sphere with varying radii. By using the shrinking and moving least-squares methods, we reduce a point cloud to a thin curve-like point set which can be approximated to the spine curve of a canal surface. The distance between a point in the thin point cloud and a corresponding point in the original point set represents the radius of the canal surface.