In this dissertation, different reconstruction problems in computer graphics are shown to be instances of a common class of optimization problems which can be solved using a uniform algorithmic framework. Moreover, it is shown that similar optimization methods can also be used to solve data-based modeling problems, where the amount of information that can be obtained from measurements is insufficient for accurate reconstruction.
As real-world examples of reconstruction problems, sparsity and group sparsity methods are presented for radio interferometric image reconstruction in static and time-dependent settings. As a modeling example, analogous approaches are investigated to automatically create volumetric models of astronomical nebulae from single images based on symmetry assumptions.