# An Efficient Volumetric Mesh Representation for Real-time Scene Reconstruction using Spatial Hashing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03949 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03949/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 Mar 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [ASH: A Modern Framework for Parallel Spatial Hashing in 3D Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00511/) (2021)
- [Fast Monocular Scene Reconstruction with Global-Sparse Local-Dense Grids](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13220/) (2023)
- [SDD-4DGS: Static-Dynamic Aware Decoupling in Gaussian Splatting for 4D Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09332/) (2025)
- [Revisiting LiDAR Registration and Reconstruction: A Range Image Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02779/) (2021)
- [Online Learning of a Probabilistic and Adaptive Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16832/) (2021)
- [Rendering and Tracking the Directional TSDF: Modeling Surface Orientation for Coherent Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08115/) (2021)
- [Rendering the Directional TSDF for Tracking and Multi-Sensor Registration with Point-To-Plane Scale ICP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12796/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Mesh plays an indispensable role in dense real-time reconstruction essential in robotics. Efforts have been made to maintain flexible data structures for 3D data fusion, yet an efficient incremental framework specifically designed for online mesh storage and manipulation is missing. We propose a novel framework to compactly generate, update, and refine mesh for scene reconstruction upon a volumetric representation. Maintaining a spatial-hashed field of cubes, we distribute vertices with continuous value on discrete edges that support O(1) vertex accessing and forbid memory redundancy. By introducing Hamming distance in mesh refinement, we further improve the mesh quality regarding the triangle type consistency with a low cost. Lock-based and lock-free operations were applied to avoid thread conflicts in GPU parallel computation. Experiments demonstrate that the mesh memory consumption is significantly reduced while the running speed is kept in the online reconstruction process.