AUTOMATIC GENERATION OF A CUBIC B-SPLINE REPRESENTATION FOR A GENERAL DIGITIZED CURVE

Abstract

Cubic B-splines are often used to represent curves and are usually specified by a process of interaction on a graphic screen between the designer and the computer. This paper describes a program which, when given a digitized curve of general shape, without a direct analytical representation, automatically finds suitable knot points and defines the cubic B-spline polygon corresponding to that curve. That B-spline polygon is used to regenerate the curve graphically. The method is generally applicable in many fields including computer aided design where a need exists to represent arbitrary curves with given accuracy. In this paper results applied to archeological vessels are shown, with a discussion of accuracy and compactness of the representation. The algorithm will accurately represent a curve, using less than 10% of the storage required if all the digitized points of the curve were stored.