Apparatus and method for representing multi-level LOD three-dimensional image

An apparatus for representing a three-dimensional image with a multi-level LOD (level of detail), comprising:

• a patch configuration unit configuring a multi-level LOD hierarchical mesh for each hierarchical level with a different LOD level by arranging triangular patches of a upper hierarchical level (level m+1, lower resolution) to have approximately k×k of triangular patches of an lower hierarchical level (level m, higher resolution), where k is the number of horizontal and vertical grids of the lower hierarchical level and sampling information on height of a target image on a regular basis to allocate the sampled height information to each vertex of the triangular patches included in the multi-level LOD hierarchical mesh;
• an LOD determination unit determining an LOD of each triangular patch according to a view point of a virtual camera;
• and
• a patch connection unit connecting the adjacent triangular patches with each other without gaps when the adjacent triangular patches among the triangular patches of the multi-level LOD hierarchical mesh have different LOD levels.