In recent years, digital maps have been used in a variety of scenarios, including car navigation systems and map information services over the Internet. These digital maps are formed by multiple layers of maps of different scales; the map data most suitable for the specific situation are used. Currently, the production of map data of different scales is done by hand due to constraints related to processing time and accuracy. We conducted research concerning technologies for automatic generation of simplified map data from detailed map data. In the present paper, the authors propose the following: (1) a method to transform data related to streets, rivers, etc. containing widths into line data, (2) a method to eliminate the component points of the data, and (3) a method to eliminate data that lie below a certain threshold. In addition, in order to evaluate the proposed method, a user survey was conducted; in this survey we compared maps generated using the proposed method with the commercially available maps. From the viewpoint of the amount of data reduction and processing time, and on the basis of the results of the survey, we confirmed the effectiveness of the automatic generation of simplified maps using the proposed methods.

We consider the problem of triangulating an x-monotone polygon with a small number of different edge lengths using Steiner points. Given a parameter α, where 0<α<1, we shall present an algorithm for finding an almost uniform triangular mesh with 3π/8α2+o(1/α2) different edge lengths such that every edge length is between l and (2+α)l. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of this algorithm.

In this paper, we propose a construction method of three-dimensional deformable models that represent tree-shaped human organs, such as bronchial tubes, based on results obtained by statistically analyzing the distributions of bifurcation points in the tree-shaped organs. The models are made to be used as standard templates of tree-shaped organs in medical image recognition, and are formed by control points that can be uniquely identified as structural elements of organs such as bifurcation tracheae in bronchial tubes. They can be transfigured based on the statistical validity of relationships between the control points. The optimal state of that transfiguration is determined within the framework of energy minimization. Experimental results from bronchial tubes are shown on actual CT images.

In reconstructing 3-D from images based on feature points, one usually defines a triangular mesh that has these feature points as vertices and displays the scene as a polyhedron. If the scene itself is a polyhedron, however, some of the displayed edges may be inconsistent with the true shape. This paper presents a new technique for automatically eliminating such inconsistencies by using a special template. We also present a technique for removing spurious occluding edges. All the procedures do not require any thresholds to be adjusted. Using real images, we demonstrate that our method has high capability to correct inconsistencies.

The reflection signal in the inverse synthetic aperture radar is measured in the polar coordinate defined by the object rotation angle and the frequency. The reconstruction of fixed scene images requires the coordinate transformation of the polar format data into the rectangular spatial frequency domain, which is then processed by the inverse Fourier transform. In this paper a fast and flexible method of coordinate transformation based on the nearest neighbor interpolation utilizing the Delauney triangulation is at first presented. Then, the induced errors in the transformed rectangular spatial frequency data and the resultant fixed scene images are investigated by simulation under the uniform plane wave transmit-receive mode over the swept frequency 120-160 GHz, and the results which demonstrate the validity of the current coordinate transformation are presented.

Triangulations have been one of main research topics in computational geometry and have many applications in computer graphics, finite element methods, mesh generation, etc. This paper surveys properties of triangulations in the two- or higher-dimensional spaces. For triangulations of the planar point set, we have a good triangulation, called the Delaunay triangulation, which satisfies several optimality criteria. Based on Delaunay triangulations, many properties of planar triangulations can be shown, and a graph structure can be constructed for all planar triangulations. On the other hand, triangulations in higher dimensions are much more complicated than in planar cases. However, there does exist a subclass of triangulations, called regular triangulations, with nice structure, which is also touched upon.

After a brief discussion of the demands in meshing for semiconductor process and device simulation, we present a three-dimensional Delaunay refinement technique combined with a modified advancing front algorithm.