A two-level topological decomposition for non-manifold simplicial shapes

Modeling and understanding complex non-manifold shapes is a key issue in shape analysis. Geometric shapes are commonly discretized as two- or three-dimensional simplicial complexes embedded in the 3D Euclidean space. The topological structure of a nonmanifold simplicial shape can be analyzed through its decomposition into a collection of components with a simpler topology. Here, we present a topological decomposition of a shape at two different levels, with different degrees of granularity. We discuss the topological properties of the components at each level, and we present algorithms for computing such decompositions. We investigate the relations among the components, and propose a graph-based representation for such relations.