Plane Space Representation in Context of Mode-Based Symmetry Plane Detection

This paper describes various representations of the space of planes. The main focus is on the plane space representation in the symmetry plane detection in \(E^3\) where many candidate planes for many pairs of points of the given object are created and then the most often candidate is found as a mode in the candidate space, so-called Mode-based approach. The result depends on the representation used in the mode-seeking process. The most important aspect is how well distances in the space correspond to similarities of the actual planes with respect to the input object. So, we describe various usable distance functions and compare them both theoretically and practically. The results suggest that, when using the Mode-based approach, representing planes by reflection transformations is the best way but other simpler representations are applicable as well. On the other hand, representations using 3D dual spaces are not very appropriate. Furthermore, we introduce a novel way of representing the reflection transformations using dual quaternions.