Apparatus and method for finding visible points in a point cloud

A method for determining an optimal location for positioning an image capturing device within a volume from a pre-selected set of multiple locations, the method comprising:

• obtaining a plurality of points to be visible from the image capturing device;
• performing inversion on points located in the vicinity of the plurality of points thus creating a computerized inversed object, each point in the vicinity of the plurality of point is translated to a corresponding point in the computerized inversed object, wherein the inversion is a monotonically decreasing function depending on the distance of a point of the computerized object from the viewpoint;
• defining a convex hull of the inversed object and the viewpoint;
• determining visibility of a point of the plurality of points from a determined viewpoint according to the position of the corresponding point on the convex hull relative to neighbor points of the point;
• repeating said determining for each location from the pre-selected set of multiple locations of the determined viewpoint within the volume, determining whether the plurality of points are visible from each location;
• selecting the optimal location of the image capturing device based on the results of said repeated determining;
• wherein the computerized method is performed by a general purpose computer having processor.