Second-Order Algebraic Surfaces and Two Image Photometric Stereo (original) (raw)

Application of Computer Algebra to Photometric Stereo with Two Light Sources

Programming and Computer Software, 2018

This paper addresses the problem of reconstructing the shape of an unknown Lambertian surface from its two photometric images obtained by successive illumination of the surface with two different remote light sources. Using computer algebra methods, we investigate the conditions of existence and uniqueness of a solution to a system of algebraic equations that determine the gradient of a function of two variables given by the equation. We also analyze necessary and sufficient conditions for unique determination of a second-order algebraic surface from its two images in the general case. Correctness of the theoretical results obtained is confirmed by simulating photometric images of various surfaces.

Application of computer algebra for the reconstruction of surfaces from their photometric stereo images

Programming and Computer Software, 2017

The problem of reconstructing a Lambertian surface from its two photometric stereo images is discussed. Previously, the solution to this problem was only obtained for a special choice of two light source directions. In this paper, using the computer algebra system Mathematica, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the unique reconstruction of the surface from its two images is analyzed in a more general setting. Photometric images of various surfaces are simulated, and the validity of the theoretical results is demonstrated.

Orthogonal Illuminations in Two Light-Source Photometric Stereo

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016

In this paper we investigate the case of ambiguous shape reconstruction from two light-source photometric stereo based on illuminating the unknown Lambertian surface. So-far this problem is merely well-understood for two linearly independent light-source directions with one illumination assumed as overhead. As already established, a necessary and sufficient condition to disambiguate the entire shape reconstruction process is controlled by the satisfaction of the corresponding secondorder linear PDE with constant coefficients in two independent variables. This work extends the latter to an arbitrary pair of light-source directions transforming the above constraint into a special nonlinear PDE. In addition, a similar ambiguity analysis is also performed for a special configuration of two light-source directions assumed this time as orthogonal and contained in the vertical plane. Finally, this work is supplemented by illustrative examples exploiting symbolic computation used within a framework of continuous reflectance map model (i.e. an image irradiance equation) and applied to a genuine Lambertian surfaces.

Application of Computer Algebra to the Reconstruction of Surface from Its Photometric Images

Programming and Computer Software, 2018

This paper addresses the problem of reconstructing the shape of an unknown Lambertian surface given in the 3D space by a continuously differentiable function. The surface is reconstructed from its photometric images obtained by its successive illumination with three different remote light sources. Using computer algebra methods, we show that the unique solution of the problem, which exists in the domain of all three images, can be continued beyond this domain based on the solutions obtained for any pair of the three images. To disambiguate the reconstruction of the surface from its two images, we compute the corresponding value of the parameter at the boundary of the domain. Soundness of the theoretical results is confirmed by simulating photometric images of various surfaces.

Photometric stereo: Lambertian reflectance and light sources with unknown direction and strength

This paper reconsiders the familiar case of photometric stereo under the assumption of Lambertian surface re ectance and three distant point sources of illumination. Here, it is assumed that the directions to and the relative strengths of the three light sources are not known a priori. Rather, estimation of these parameters becomes part of the problem formulation. Each light source is represented by a 3-D vector that points in the direction of the light source and has magnitude proportional to the strength of the light source. Thus, nine parameters are required to characterize the three light sources. It is shown that, regardless of object shape, triples of measured intensity values are constrained to lie on a quadratic surface having six degrees of freedom. Estimation of the six parameters of the quadratic surface allows the determination of the nine parameters of the light sources up to an unknown rotation. This is su cient to determine object shape, although attitude with respect to the world-based or the camera-based coordinate system can not be simultaneously recovered without additional information.

Photometric Stereo with General, Unknown Lighting

International Journal of Computer Vision, 2006

Work on photometric stereo has shown how to recover the shape and reflectance properties of an object using multiple images taken with a fixed viewpoint and variable lighting conditions. This work has primarily relied on the presence of a single point source of light in each image. In this paper we show how to perform photometric stereo assuming that all lights in a scene are isotropic and distant from the object but otherwise unconstrained. Lighting in each image may be an unknown and arbitrary combination of diffuse, point and extended sources. Our work is based on recent results showing that for Lambertian objects, general lighting conditions can be represented using low order spherical harmonics. Using this representation we can recover shape by performing a simple optimization in a low-dimensional space. We also analyze the shape ambiguities that arise in such a representation.

Photometric stereo through an adapted alternation approach

2008 15th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, 2008

Photometric stereo aims at finding the surface normal and reflectance at every point of an object from a set of images obtained under different lighting conditions. The obtained intensity image data are stacked into a matrix that can be approximated by a low-dimensional linear subspace, under the Lambertian model. The current paper proposes to use an adaptation of the Alternation technique to tackle this problem when the images contain missing data, which correspond to pixels in shadow and saturated regions. Experimental results considering both synthetic and real images show the good performance of the proposed Alternation-based strategy.

An Application of the Photometric Stereo Method

1979

7' The orientation of patches on the surface of an object can be determined from multiple images taken with different illumination, but from the Sante viewing position. This method. refer red to as photometric stereo, can be implemented using table lookup based on nunwrica l inversion of experimentally determined reflectance maps. Here we concentrate on

Object surface recovery using a multi-light photometric stereo technique for non-Lambertian surfaces subject to shadows and specularities

Image and Vision Computing, 2007

This paper presents a new multi-light source photometric stereo system for reconstructing images of various characteristics of non-Lambertian rough surfaces with widely varying texture and specularity. Compared to the traditional three-light photometric stereo method, extra lights are employed using a hierarchical selection strategy to eliminate the effects of shadows and specularities, and to make the system more robust. We also show that six lights is the minimum needed in order to apply photometric stereo to the entire visible surface of any convex object. Experiments on synthetic and real scenes demonstrate that the proposed method can extract surface reflectance and orientation effectively, even in the presence of strong shadows and highlights. Hence, the method offers advantages in the recovery of dichromatic surfaces possessing rough texture or deeply relieved topographic features, with applications in reverse engineering and industrial surface inspection. Experimental results are presented in the paper. Published by Elsevier B.V.