  Triangular meshes are the most popular representations of 3D objects, but
many mesh surfaces contain topological singularities that represent a challenge
for displaying or further processing them properly. One such singularity is the
self-intersections that may be present in mesh surfaces that have been created
by a scanning procedure or by a deformation transformation, such as
off-setting.
  Mesh foldings comprise a special case of mesh surface self-intersections,
where the faces of the 3D model intersect and become reversed, with respect to
the unfolded part of the mesh surface. A novel method for the recognition and
repair of mesh surface foldings is presented, which exploits the structural
characteristics of the foldings in order to efficiently detect the folded
regions. Following detection, the foldings are removed and any gaps so created
are filled based on the geometry of the 3D model. The proposed method is
directly applicable to simple mesh surface representations while it does not
perform any embedding of the 3D mesh (i.e. voxelization, projection). Target of
the proposed method is to facilitate mesh degradation procedures in a fashion
that retains the original structure, given the operator, in the most efficient
manner.
