To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation ...

dataset. ........................................................................................................................1126.22. Comparison of the basins of convergence with the ICP basins: Building dataset.....................................................................................................................................1136.23. Comparison of the method’s basins of convergence for several values of σ with theICP basin of convergence. Parts dataset ....................................................................1146.24. Comparison of the method’s basins of convergence with the ICP basins: Boatdataset. ........................................................................................................................1156.25. Comparison of the method’s basins of convergence with the ICP basins: Geardataset. ........................................................................................................................1166.26. Comparison of the method’s basins of convergence with the ICP basins: Microchipdataset. ........................................................................................................................1176.27. Example of basins of convergence with the two-step algorithm for the Gear datasetcompared with basins obtained with the single step runs for different values of σ, andcompared with the ICP basin. .....................................................................................1186.28. Evolution of the Bias and Variance components of the Mean Squared Error (MSE)computed with respect to a uniform distribution of initial transformations for theGaussian Fields method, and for increasing values of σ ............................................1216.29. Comparison of the MSE of the Gaussian Fields method with the MSE of ICP (MSEcomputed with respect to initialization), Gear and Microchip datasets......................1226.30. Comparison of the MSE of the Gaussian Fields method with the MSE of ICP, Partsand Boat datasets.........................................................................................................1236.31. Comparison of the MSE of the Gaussian Fields method with the MSE of ICP, Vanand Building datasets ..................................................................................................1246.32. The sub-sampling of the points of Parts dataset using uniform and curvature basedsampling......................................................................................................................1266.33. Rotation and translation errors for the Gaussian method as a function of the numberof points for uniform and curvature-based sampling..................................................1276.34. Rotation and translation errors for the Gaussian method as a function of the numberof points for uniform and curvature-based sampling..................................................1286.35. Several steps of the iterative alignment of hand contours which are related by anaffine transformation using the Gaussian Fields method............................................1316.36. Thermal (a) and Color (b) images of faces are registered as shown in the compositeimage in (c) by maximizing the Gaussian registration criterion to align the edges shownin the unregistered (d) and registered (e) cases...........................................................1326.37. The input of a photo-realistic modeling system: (a) color image, (b) range map.....................................................................................................................................1356.38. Multi-modal Face reconstruction from range, color sequences and thermal images......................................................................................................................................137