Free-Boundary Quasiconformal Maps via a Least-squares Operator in Diffeomorphism Optimization

Free-boundary diffeomorphism optimization, an important and widely occurring task in geometric modeling, computer graphics, and biological imaging, requires simultaneously determining a planar target domain and a locally bijective map with well-controlled distortion. We formulate this task through the least-squares quasiconformal (LSQC) operator and establish key structural properties of the LSQC minimizer, including well-posedness under mild conditions, invariance under similarity transformations, and resolution-independent behavior with stability under mesh refinement. We further analyze the sensitivity of the LSQC solution with respect to the Beltrami coefficient, establishing stability and differentiability properties that enable gradient-based optimization over the space of Beltrami coefficients. To make this differentiable formulation practical at scale and to facilitate the optimization process, we introduce the Spectral Beltrami Network (SBN), a multiscale mesh-spectral surrogate that approximates the LSQC solution operator in a single differentiable forward pass. This yields SBN-Opt, an optimization framework that searches over admissible Beltrami coefficients and pinning conditions to solve free-boundary diffeomorphism objectives with explicit distortion control. Extensive experiments on equiareal parameterization and inconsistent surface registration demonstrate consistent improvements over traditional numerical algorithms.