Natural method for three-dimensional range data compression

Prior studies on converting three-dimensional (3D) range data into regular two-dimensional (2D) color images using virtual fringe projection techniques showed great promise for 3D range data compression, yet they require resampling the raw scanned data. Due to this resampling, the natural 3D range data are altered and sampling error may be introduced. This paper presents a method that compresses the raw sampling points without modifications. Instead of directly utilizing the 3D recovered shape, this method compresses the s map, the scale factor of a perspective projection from a 3D space to a 2D space. The s map is then converted to 2D color image for further compression with existing 2D image compression techniques. By this means, 3D data obtained by 3D range scanners can be compressed into 2D images without any resampling, providing a natural and more accurate method of compressing 3D range data. Experimental results verified the success of the proposed method.