Explicit Inversion of Planar NURBS Curves

Abstract

We prove that a general planar NURBS curve parametrization $\phi: [u_0,u_m] \xrightarrow{} C \subset \mathbb{R}^2$ admits an inverse map $\phi^{-1}: C \xrightarrow{} [u_0,u_m]$ defined by rational splines. More specifically, we construct a family of rational spline functions on the curve $C$, present explicit formulas for their computation, and prove that the inverse parametrization admits a representation as a linear combination of these functions. Several examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.