A global approach to the refinement of manifold data

A refinement of manifold data is a computational process, which produces a denser set of discrete data from a given one. Such refinements are closely related to multiresolution representations of manifold data by pyramid transforms, and approximation of manifold-valued functions by repeated refinements schemes. Most refinement methods compute each refined element separately, independently of the computations of the other elements. Here we propose a global method which computes all the refined elements simultaneously, using geodesic averages. We analyse repeated refinements schemes based on this global approach, and derive conditions guaranteeing strong convergence.