Matrix representations for multi-degree B-splines

Abstract The paper is concerned with computing the B-spline basis of a multi-degree spline space, namely a space of piecewise functions comprised of polynomial segments of different degrees. To this aim, we provide a general method to work out a matrix representation relating the sought basis with another one easier to compute. This will allow us, for example, to calculate a multi degree B-spline basis starting from local Bernstein bases of different degrees or from the B-spline basis of a spline space where all sections have the same degree. This change of basis can be translated into a conceptually simple and computationally efficient algorithm for the evaluation of multi-degree B-splines.