Enriching Point Clouds with Implicit Representations for 3D Classification and Segmentation

Continuous implicit representations can flexibly describe complex 3D geometry and offer excellent potential for 3D point cloud analysis. However, it remains challenging for existing point-based deep learning architectures to leverage the implicit representations due to the discrepancy in data struct...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zexin Yang, Qin Ye, Jantien Stoter, Liangliang Nan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-12-01
Series:Remote Sensing
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/1/61
_version_ 1797439800234475520
author Zexin Yang
Qin Ye
Jantien Stoter
Liangliang Nan
author_facet Zexin Yang
Qin Ye
Jantien Stoter
Liangliang Nan
author_sort Zexin Yang
collection DOAJ
description Continuous implicit representations can flexibly describe complex 3D geometry and offer excellent potential for 3D point cloud analysis. However, it remains challenging for existing point-based deep learning architectures to leverage the implicit representations due to the discrepancy in data structures between implicit fields and point clouds. In this work, we propose a new point cloud representation by integrating the 3D Cartesian coordinates with the intrinsic geometric information encapsulated in its implicit field. Specifically, we parameterize the continuous unsigned distance field around each point into a low-dimensional feature vector that captures the local geometry. Then we concatenate the 3D Cartesian coordinates of each point with its encoded implicit feature vector as the network input. The proposed method can be plugged into an existing network architecture as a module without trainable weights. We also introduce a novel local canonicalization approach to ensure the transformation-invariance of encoded implicit features. With its local mechanism, our implicit feature encoding module can be applied to not only point clouds of single objects but also those of complex real-world scenes. We have validated the effectiveness of our approach using five well-known point-based deep networks (i.e., PointNet, SuperPoint Graph, RandLA-Net, CurveNet, and Point Structuring Net) on object-level classification and scene-level semantic segmentation tasks. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed point representation.
first_indexed 2024-03-09T11:59:22Z
format Article
id doaj.art-4182d76fed42445d8cf0e8b83463bad0
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2072-4292
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-09T11:59:22Z
publishDate 2022-12-01
publisher MDPI AG
record_format Article
series Remote Sensing
spelling doaj.art-4182d76fed42445d8cf0e8b83463bad02023-11-30T23:05:13ZengMDPI AGRemote Sensing2072-42922022-12-011516110.3390/rs15010061Enriching Point Clouds with Implicit Representations for 3D Classification and SegmentationZexin Yang0Qin Ye1Jantien Stoter2Liangliang Nan3College of Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, ChinaCollege of Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China3D Geoinformation Research Group, Delft University of Technology, 2628 BL Delft, The Netherlands3D Geoinformation Research Group, Delft University of Technology, 2628 BL Delft, The NetherlandsContinuous implicit representations can flexibly describe complex 3D geometry and offer excellent potential for 3D point cloud analysis. However, it remains challenging for existing point-based deep learning architectures to leverage the implicit representations due to the discrepancy in data structures between implicit fields and point clouds. In this work, we propose a new point cloud representation by integrating the 3D Cartesian coordinates with the intrinsic geometric information encapsulated in its implicit field. Specifically, we parameterize the continuous unsigned distance field around each point into a low-dimensional feature vector that captures the local geometry. Then we concatenate the 3D Cartesian coordinates of each point with its encoded implicit feature vector as the network input. The proposed method can be plugged into an existing network architecture as a module without trainable weights. We also introduce a novel local canonicalization approach to ensure the transformation-invariance of encoded implicit features. With its local mechanism, our implicit feature encoding module can be applied to not only point clouds of single objects but also those of complex real-world scenes. We have validated the effectiveness of our approach using five well-known point-based deep networks (i.e., PointNet, SuperPoint Graph, RandLA-Net, CurveNet, and Point Structuring Net) on object-level classification and scene-level semantic segmentation tasks. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed point representation.https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/1/61point cloudsemantic segmentationobject classificationimplicit representation
spellingShingle Zexin Yang
Qin Ye
Jantien Stoter
Liangliang Nan
Enriching Point Clouds with Implicit Representations for 3D Classification and Segmentation
Remote Sensing
point cloud
semantic segmentation
object classification
implicit representation
title Enriching Point Clouds with Implicit Representations for 3D Classification and Segmentation
title_full Enriching Point Clouds with Implicit Representations for 3D Classification and Segmentation
title_fullStr Enriching Point Clouds with Implicit Representations for 3D Classification and Segmentation
title_full_unstemmed Enriching Point Clouds with Implicit Representations for 3D Classification and Segmentation
title_short Enriching Point Clouds with Implicit Representations for 3D Classification and Segmentation
title_sort enriching point clouds with implicit representations for 3d classification and segmentation
topic point cloud
semantic segmentation
object classification
implicit representation
url https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/1/61
work_keys_str_mv AT zexinyang enrichingpointcloudswithimplicitrepresentationsfor3dclassificationandsegmentation
AT qinye enrichingpointcloudswithimplicitrepresentationsfor3dclassificationandsegmentation
AT jantienstoter enrichingpointcloudswithimplicitrepresentationsfor3dclassificationandsegmentation
AT liangliangnan enrichingpointcloudswithimplicitrepresentationsfor3dclassificationandsegmentation