Reeb graph computation through spectral clustering

The Reeb graph provides a structure that encodes the topology of a shape, and it has been gaining in popularity in shape analysis and understanding. We introduce a spectral clustering method to compute the Reeb graph. Given a 3-D model embedded in the Euclidean space, we define the Morse function according to the connected components of the 3-D model in a spectral space. The spectral clustering formulation gives rise to a consistent Reeb graph over pose changes of the same object with meaningful subparts and yields a hierarchical computation of the Reeb graph. We prove that this method is theoretically reasonable, and experimental results show its efficiency.