Best Paper Award of "Shape Modeling International 2015"

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At the conference "Shape Modeling International 2015" in Lille, France, the article by Tom Vierjahn (Virtual Reality Group, RWTH Aachen University) and Klaus Hinrichs (Visualisation and Computer Graphics Research Group, WWU Münster) received the best paper award.

In the paper entitled "Surface-Reconstructing Growing Neural Gas" the authors present their technique for geometry reconstruction that creates textured 3D models from unorganized point clouds. In contrast to prior approaches, the new technique allows for extending the models with further data at any time while preserving the models created so far.

A potential application can be found in disaster management, for instance after a landslide: Using the new technique with suitably preprocessed photos, the relief units can evaluate the condition of, e.g., buildings in a 3D view and keep it updated over the complete course of the mission.

The article is available online and will be published in a special issue of Elsevier's journal "Computers & Graphics". doi:10.1016/j.cag.2015.05.016