System and method to obtain surface structures of multi-dimensional objects, and to represent those surface structures for animation, transmission and display

A decoder for receiving a data bit-stream representing a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, comprising:

• means for receiving the bit-stream comprising a representation of at least one boundary node, and connectivity and material properties information as a list of directions starting from the at least one boundary node to reach a plurality of other boundary nodes of the surface to be represented, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of incoming or outgoing directions associated with the at least one boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node;
• means for initializing an n-dimensional mesh at a first resolution;
• means for reading the representation of the at least one boundary node;
• means for reading the connectivity information of a first number of boundary nodes and for initializing nodes of the mesh in accordance with the connectivity information;
• and
• means for reading the material properties information.

A method of decoding a data bit-stream representing a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, comprising:

• receiving, in an electronic device, a bit-stream comprising a representation of at least one boundary node, and connectivity and material properties information as a list of directions starting from the at least one boundary node to reach a plurality of other boundary nodes of the surface to be represented, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of incoming or outgoing directions associated with the at least one boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node;
• initializing a grid at a first resolution;
• reading the representation of the at least one boundary node;
• reading the connectivity information of a first number of boundary nodes and initializing boundary nodes within the grid in accordance with the connectivity information;
• and
• reading the material properties information.

A decoder for receiving a data bit-stream representing a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, comprising:

• means for receiving the bit-stream comprising a representation of at least one boundary node, and connectivity and material properties information as a list of directions starting from the at least one boundary node to reach a plurality of other boundary nodes of the surface to be represented, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of incoming or outgoing directions associated with the at least one boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node;
• means for initializing an n-dimensional mesh at a first resolution;
• means for reading the representation of the at least one boundary node means for reading the connectivity information of a first number of boundary nodes and for initializing nodes of the mesh in accordance with the connectivity information;
• and
• means for generating a mesh description of the surface, the mesh description comprising a set of boundary nodes defined by intersection points in the grid and offsets from this grid.

A method of decoding a data bit-stream representing a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, comprising:

• receiving, in an electronic device, a bit-stream comprising a representation of at least one boundary node, and connectivity and material properties information as a list of directions starting from the at least one boundary node to reach a plurality of other boundary nodes of the surface to be represented, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of incoming or outgoing directions associated with the at least one boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node;
• initializing a grid at a first resolution;
• reading the representation of the at least one boundary node;
• reading the connectivity information of a first number of boundary nodes and initializing boundary nodes within the grid in accordance with the connectivity information;
• and
• generating a mesh description of the surface, the mesh description comprising a set of boundary nodes defined by intersection points in the grid and offsets from this grid.

A method of preparing data for displaying a part of a surface of an n-dimensional body, n being at least 3, the method comprising the steps of:

• providing said body;
• providing a region-of-interest indicator;
• indicating said part of said surface;
• and
• obtaining, in an electronic device, an n-dimensional discrete mesh representation of the surface, the mesh representation of the surface comprising a plurality of boundary nodes, each boundary node lying on or adjacent to the surface, each boundary node being associated with connectivity information comprising representations of up to (n−1) incoming and/or up to (n−1) outgoing directions towards up to 2*(n−1) adjacent boundary nodes adjacent to the said boundary node, the directions being defined in such a way that the cross product of the up to n−1 incoming or outgoing directions associated with any boundary node represents a further vector which points away from the surface at that boundary node.