The arrival, and continuing evolution, of high quality 3D objects has been made possible by recent progress in 3D scanner acquisition and 3D graphics rendering. With this increasing quality comes a corresponding increase in the size and complexity of the data files and the necessity for advances in compression techniques. Effective indexing to facilitate the retrieval of the 3D data is then required to efficiently store, search and recapture the objects that have been compressed. The application of 3D images in fields such as communications, medicine and the military also calls for copyright protection, or watermarking, to secure the data for transmission.