Efficient globally optimal 2D-to-3D deformable shape matching

We propose the first algorithm for non-rigid 2D-to-3D shape matching, where the input is a 2D query shape as well as a 3D target shape and the output is a continuous matching curve represented as a closed contour on the 3D shape. We cast the problem as finding the shortest circular path on the product 3-manifold of the two shapes. We prove that the optimal matching can be computed in polynomial time with a (worst-case) complexity of O(mn2log(n)), wherem and n denote the number of vertices on the 2D and the 3D shape respectively. Quantitative evaluation confirms that the method provides excellent results for sketch-based deformable 3D shape retrieval.