Given scattered points from range or volumetric images, methods for th
e recovery of scene structures are described. The structures are repre
sented by rational Gaussian surfaces. Examples demonstrating reconstru
ction of three-dimensional (3D) scenes from scattered depth measuremen
ts obtained from stereo disparity, recovery of 3D shapes from noisy ra
nge data, and segmentation of volumetric images for the extraction of
generalized cylinders are presented.