Hierarchical Genetic Algorithm for B-Spline Surface Approximation of Smooth Explicit Data

B-spline surface approximation has been widely used in many applications such as CAD, medical imaging, reverse engineering, and geometric modeling. Given a data set of measures, the surface approximation aims to find a surface that optimally fits the data set. One of the main problems associated with surface approximation by B-splines is the adequate selection of the number and location of the knots, as well as the solution of the system of equations generated by tensor product spline surfaces. In this work, we use a hierarchical genetic algorithm (HGA) to tackle the B-spline surface approximation of smooth explicit data. The proposed approach is based on a novel hierarchical gene structure for the chromosomal representation, which allows us to determine the number and location of the knots for each surface dimension and the B-spline coefficients simultaneously. The method is fully based on genetic algorithms and does not require subjective parameters like smooth factor or knot locations to perform the solution. In order to validate the efficacy of the proposed approach, simulation results from several tests on smooth surfaces and comparison with a successful method have been included.