filename : p_Sig03.pdf entry : inproceedings pages : year : 2003 title : Signed Distance Transform Using Graphics Hardware author : Christian Sigg, Ronald Peikert, Markus Gross booktitle : Proceedings of IEEE Visualization '03 editor : R. Moorhead, G. Turk, J. van Wijk publisher : IEEE Computer Society Press language : English month : October keywords : Distance field, distance transform, Voronoi diagram, fragment program, scan conversion. abstract : This paper presents a signed distance transform algorithm using graphics hardware. The signed distance transform computes the scalar valued function of the Euclidean distance to a given manifold of co-dimension one. For a closed and orientable manifold, the distance has a negative sign on one side of the manifold and a positive sign on the other. Triangle meshes are considered for the representation of a two-dimensional manifold. The distance function is sampled on a regular Cartesian grid. The algorithm has linear complexity in the number of grid points. We assign to each primitive a simple polyhedron enclosing its Voronoi cell. The distance to the primitive is computed for every grid point inside the polyhedron. Points in regions of overlapping polyhedra are assigned the minimum of all computed distances. In order to speed up computations, points inside each polyhedron are determined by scan conversion of grid slices using graphics hardware. A fragment program is used to perform the nonlinear interpolation and minimization of distance values.