Manifold k-NN: Accelerated k-NN Queries for Manifold Point Clouds

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Main Authors: Wang, Pengfei, Guo, Qinghao, Zhao, Haisen, Xin, Shiqing, Chen, Shuangmin, Tu, Changhe, Wang, Wenping
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wang, Pengfei
Guo, Qinghao
Zhao, Haisen
Xin, Shiqing
Chen, Shuangmin
Tu, Changhe
Wang, Wenping
author_facet Wang, Pengfei
Guo, Qinghao
Zhao, Haisen
Xin, Shiqing
Chen, Shuangmin
Tu, Changhe
Wang, Wenping
contents k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) search is a fundamental primitive in geometry processing and computer graphics. While spatial partitioning structures such as kd-trees are standard, they are often manifold-blind, failing to exploit the intrinsic low-dimensional structure of points sampled from 2-manifolds. Recent advances in dynamic programming-based nearest neighbor search (DP-NNS) leverage incrementally constructed Voronoi diagrams to accelerate queries, where each site p maintains a list of successors that progressively refine its Voronoi cell. However, DP-NNS is restricted to single nearest neighbor (k=1) searches, precluding their adoption in applications that require local neighborhood statistics. In this paper, we generalize the DP-NNS framework to support arbitrary k-NN queries for manifold-aligned data. Our approach is founded on the geometric observation that if p_i is the nearest neighbor of a query q in P, then the second nearest neighbor of q must reside either within the prefix set P_{1:i-1} = {p_1, \dots, p_{i-1}} or within p_i's successor list. By recursively extending this principle, we introduce Manifold k-NN, a recursive algorithmic scheme that significantly outperforms conventional kd-trees for manifold-aligned data. Our method achieves a 1\times--10\times speedup in volume-to-surface query scenarios and inherently supports dynamic prefix queries -- enabling k-NN searches within any subset P_{1:m} (m \leq n) with zero overhead. Furthermore, we extend the framework to support point deletion via local Delaunay updates, providing a complete suite of dynamic operations for point set modification. Comprehensive experiments on diverse geometric datasets demonstrate the efficiency and broad applicability of our approach for modern graphics pipelines. Source code is available at https://github.com/sssomeone/manifold-knn.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_02224
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Manifold k-NN: Accelerated k-NN Queries for Manifold Point Clouds
Wang, Pengfei
Guo, Qinghao
Zhao, Haisen
Xin, Shiqing
Chen, Shuangmin
Tu, Changhe
Wang, Wenping
Computational Geometry
Graphics
k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) search is a fundamental primitive in geometry processing and computer graphics. While spatial partitioning structures such as kd-trees are standard, they are often manifold-blind, failing to exploit the intrinsic low-dimensional structure of points sampled from 2-manifolds. Recent advances in dynamic programming-based nearest neighbor search (DP-NNS) leverage incrementally constructed Voronoi diagrams to accelerate queries, where each site p maintains a list of successors that progressively refine its Voronoi cell. However, DP-NNS is restricted to single nearest neighbor (k=1) searches, precluding their adoption in applications that require local neighborhood statistics. In this paper, we generalize the DP-NNS framework to support arbitrary k-NN queries for manifold-aligned data. Our approach is founded on the geometric observation that if p_i is the nearest neighbor of a query q in P, then the second nearest neighbor of q must reside either within the prefix set P_{1:i-1} = {p_1, \dots, p_{i-1}} or within p_i's successor list. By recursively extending this principle, we introduce Manifold k-NN, a recursive algorithmic scheme that significantly outperforms conventional kd-trees for manifold-aligned data. Our method achieves a 1\times--10\times speedup in volume-to-surface query scenarios and inherently supports dynamic prefix queries -- enabling k-NN searches within any subset P_{1:m} (m \leq n) with zero overhead. Furthermore, we extend the framework to support point deletion via local Delaunay updates, providing a complete suite of dynamic operations for point set modification. Comprehensive experiments on diverse geometric datasets demonstrate the efficiency and broad applicability of our approach for modern graphics pipelines. Source code is available at https://github.com/sssomeone/manifold-knn.
title Manifold k-NN: Accelerated k-NN Queries for Manifold Point Clouds
topic Computational Geometry
Graphics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.02224