LOCAL TOPOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN A TETRAHEDRAL REPRESENTATION

This paper deals with topological properties of sets of tetrahedra ('' tetrahedral representations'' of three-dimensional objects). Classes o f such representations which we call normal and strongly normal are de fined and some of their basic properties are established. Computationa lly efficient methods of counting the cavities and tunnels in the neig hborhood of a tetrahedron are defined. A characterization of a simple tetrahedron is formulated, and an efficient approach is developed to i dentifying simple tetrahedra and computing measures of the local topol ogical change when a tetrahedron is deleted. (C) 1998 Academic Press.