Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization

A method for the approximation of the three principal curvatures at points on a discretized, triangulated 3D manifold in 4D space (referred to as 3-surface) is presented. The approximation scheme is based on the fact that a parametric 3-surface can locally be approximated by the graph of a trivariate function. Using a local coordinate system, at lest square polynomial approximation is constructed for the estimation of the principal curvature at each 3-surface point. Curvature is extremely useful for the analysis of qualitative characteristics of surfaces. The technique presented is an example of extending existing surface interrogation methods to multivariate data. Such a generalization is valuble for scientific visualization.