Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Mathematics and Computers in Simulation 77 (2008) 151–160 Near-best operators based on a C 2 quartic spline on the uniform four-directional mesh El Bachir Ameur a , Domingo Barrera b , Mar´ ıa J. Ib´ nez b , Driss Sbibih c, a Universit´ e Moulay Ismail, Facult´ e des Sciences et Techniques, D´ epartement d’Informatique, 52000 Errachdia, Morocco b Departamento de Matem ´ atica Aplicada, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, Campus Universitario de Fuentenueva s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain c Universit´ e Mohammed I, Ecole Sup´ erieure de Technologie, Laboratoire MATSI, Oujda, Morocco Available online 31 August 2007 Abstract We present some results about the construction of quasi-interpolant operators based on a special C 2 quartic B-spline. We show that these operators, called near-best quasi-interpolants, have the best approximation order and small infinity norms. They are obtained by solving a minimization problem that admits always a solution. We give an error bound of these quasi-interpolants and we illustrate our results by a numerical example. © 2007 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 41A05; 41A15; 65D05; 65D07 Keywords: B-splines; Box-splines; Subdivision scheme; Refinable function vector; Near-best quasi-interpolants 1. Introduction Let τ be the uniform triangulation of R 2 whose set of vertices is Z 2 (Z + (1/2)) 2 , and whose edges are parallel to the four directions e 1 = (1, 0), e 2 = (0, 1), e 3 = (1, 1) and e 4 = (-1, 1). Let P d be the space of bivariate polynomials of total degree at most d, and let S r d (τ ) be the space of bivariate piecewise polynomial functions of class C r on the plane and whose restrictions to each triangular cell of τ are in P d . Let T be a triangle of τ and λ = (λ 1 2 3 ) be the barycentric coordinates of a point M of R 2 relative to T. Each polynomial p in the space P d (T ) of polynomials defined on T has a unique representation in the Bernstein–B´ ezier form p(M) = i ∈△ d b(i) B d i (λ), Research supported in part by PROTARS III, D11/18, Ministerio de Educacin y Ciencia (Research project MTM2005-01403) and Junta de Andaluca (research group FQM/191). Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ameurelbachir@yahoo.fr (E.B. Ameur), dbarrera@ugr.es (D. Barrera), mibanez@ugr.es (M.J. Ib´ nez), sbibih@yahoo.fr (D. Sbibih). 0378-4754/$32.00 © 2007 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.matcom.2007.08.005