Is it possible to write a kd-tree to file?

[rquey]

In my program, I have a defined point cloud on which I perform nearest neighbor searches. The point cloud is always the same, but the program has to generate the kd-tree each time it runs (which can be a significant fraction of the total computation time).

To reduce the overhead, it would be interesting to have the kd-tree written to a file, so that the program can simply read it from the file as it runs (just as it reads the point cloud itself), instead of computing it over and over again.

I think this would be an interesting (practical) feature.

Is it possible?

[jlblancoc]

Hi @rquey ! Sure it is.
Please, check the example code for load / save the kd-tree index to file and let me know if you find any issues...

Note that the the raw data still needs to be loaded in memory and the kd-tree structure initialized as usual. The difference is that you should call loadIndex() instead of rebuilding the index.

[rquey]

Thank you @jlblancoc. I haven't been able to try yet, but will do it shortly and let you know if I have problems.