Conceptual integration of multiple partial geometric models

摘要

Many scientific databases need to manage complex 3D geometric data such as models of the cerebral cortex. Often the complexity of the data forces users to construct muliple, simpler representations, which cover the real, complete model only partially and approximately. In order to recover the original information one needs to integrate these partial and incomplete models. In this paper, we first develop a conceptual model for objects and relationships in 3D geometric data, as well as their partial and approximate representations. We then establish mapping relationships between different approximations of the same data. Finally, we present a geometric information integration technique that will perform the integration where possible, and determine, for some cases, when the integration cannot be performed.