A procedure is presented to improve the quality of surface meshes while maintaining the essential characteristics of the discrete surface. The surface characteristics are preserved by repositioning mesh vertices in a series of element-based local parametric spaces such that the vertices remain on the original discrete surface. The movement of the mesh vertices is driven by a non-linear numerical optimization process. Two optimization approaches are described, one which improves the quality of elements as much as possible and the other which improves element quality but also keeps the new mesh as close as possible to the original mesh.