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,C-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.