Surface approximation to scanned data

A method to approximate scanned data points with a B-spline surface is presented. The data are assumed to be organized in the form of Q _i,j, i=0,…,n; j=0,…,m _i, i.e., in a row-wise fashion. The method produces a C ^{(p-1, q-1)} continuous surface (p and q are the required degrees) that does not deviate from the data by more than a user-specified tolerance. The parametrization of the surface is not affected negatively by the distribution of the points in each row, and it can be influenced by a user-supplied knot vector.