Enforcing integrability for surface reconstruction algorithms using belief propagation in graphical models

Nemanja Petrovic, Ira Cohen, Brendan J. Frey, Ralf Koetter, Thomas S. Huang

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

Accurate calculation of the three dimensional shape of an object is one of the classic research areas of computer vision. Many of the existing methods are based on surface normal estimation, and subsequent integration of surface gradients. In general, these methods do not produce valid surface due to violation of surface integrability. We introduce a new method for shape reconstruction by integration of valid surface gradient maps. The essence of the new approach is in the strict enforcement of the surface integrability via belief propagation across graphical model. The graphical model is selected in such a way to extract information from underlying, possibly noisy, surface gradient estimators, utilize the surface integrability constraint, and produce the maximum a-posteriori estimate of a valid surface. We demonstrate the algorithm for two classic shape reconstruction techniques; shape-from-shading and photometric stereo. On a set of real and synthetic examples the new approach is shown to be fast and accurate, in the sense that shape can be rendered even in the presence of high levels of noise and sharp occlusion boundaries.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)I743-I748
JournalProceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Volume1
StatePublished - 2001
Event2001 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition - Kauai, HI, United States
Duration: Dec 8 2001Dec 14 2001

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Enforcing integrability for surface reconstruction algorithms using belief propagation in graphical models'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this