Restoration of shadows in multispectral imagery using surface reflectance relationships with nearby similar areas

The presence of shadows in optical satellite images limits the application of remote-sensing technology. It is important to restore shadow radiance information for improving information extraction from remote-sensing images. Several shadow-restoration methods have been developed using complex statistical relationships between shadowed areas and their nearby sunlit areas. In this study, a simple shadow-restoration approach was proposed based on the surface reflectance equality relationship (RER) under the assumption that the surface reflectance of a feature in the shadowed area is equal to that of the same feature in the nearby sunlit area. This approach reduces the number of parameters, thus reducing the error propagated by the uncertainties of extra parameters. The new RER method was tested with three multispectral images with different shadow features. By comparing RER with the widely used mean and variance transformation, the RER was shown to be capable of restoring the image colours, texture, tone, and brightness of the shadowed areas to a visually satisfactory level. Quantitative analysis suggests that RER can help to restore the reflectance of shadow features accurately and has robust performance for a variety of land-surface types. Moreover, RER can be effectively used to restore the spectral shape information of shadow features, which is particularly important when applying RER to the restoration of multispectral imagery for the purpose of image classification.     

Lazy Visibility Evaluation for Exact Soft Shadows

This paper presents a novel approach to compute high quality and noise‐free soft shadows using exact visibility computations. This work relies on a theoretical framework allowing to group lines according to the geometry they intersect. From this study, we derive a new algorithm encoding lazily the visibility from a polygon. Contrary to previous works on from‐polygon visibility, our approach is very robust and straightforward to implement. We apply this algorithm to solve exactly and efficiently the visibility of an area light source from any point in a scene. As a consequence, results are not sensitive to noise, contrary to soft shadows methods based on area light source sampling. We demonstrate the reliability of our approach on different scenes and configurations.     

Structural indexing: efficient 3-D object recognition

The authors present an approach for the recognition of multiple 3-D object models from three 3-D scene data. The approach uses two different types of primitives for matching: small surface patches, where differential properties can be reliably computed, and lines corresponding to depth or orientation discontinuities. These are represented by splashes and 3-D curves, respectively. It is shown how both of these primitives can be encoded by a set of super segments, consisting of connected linear segments. These super segments are entered into a table and provide the essential mechanism for fast retrieval and matching. The issues of robustness and stability of the features are addressed in detail. The acquisition of the 3-D models is performed automatically by computing splashes in highly structured areas of the objects and by using boundary and surface edges for the generation of 3-D curves. The authors present results with the current system (3-D object recognition based on super segments) and discuss further extensions     

Correlated visibility sampling for direct illumination

State-of-the-art importance sampling strategies for direct illumination take into account the importance of the incident illumination, as well as the surface BRDF. Hence, these techniques achieve low variance in unoccluded regions. However, the resulting images still have noise in partially occluded regions as these techniques do not take visibility into account during the sampling process. We introduce the notion of correlated visibility sampling, which considers visibility in partially occluded regions during the sampling process, thereby improving the quality of the shadowed regions. We aim to draw samples in the partially occluded regions according to the triple product of the incident illumination, BRDF and visibility using Monte Carlo sampling followed by Metropolis sampling.     

Intersection fields for interactive global illumination

We present a novel visibility representation, Intersection Field (i-Field), to compute global illumination in interactive rates. The i-Field provides fast visibility and line-scene intersection queries. We factorize the direct illumination into local irradiance and visibility ratio. The latter is efficiently evaluated by querying the i-Field. The indirect illumination is simulated by photon tracing, which is also accelerated by the i-Field. By quickly detecting invalid portions, our approach can handle highly dynamic scenes, allowing light sources and scene geometries to be manipulated at interactive rates through rigid transformations and free deformations.     

A microprocessor-based still frame capturing system

This paper describes the design and implementation of a low cost image capturing system. The basic feature of the design is the massive reduction of the storage requirement in comparison with a fully buffered system. This has been accomplished by effecting a compromise between the amount of high speed storage and the time required to store all or part of a digitized frame, defined as 512 scan lines, each containing 512 picture elements in the format of eight-bit words. The system can be used for the transmission of pictures, texts or documents, where the need for storing pictorial data before transmission can be totally eliminated. It can also be employed as a low cost input technique for a digital image processing system where the required image can be stored in a computer memory and undergo various image processing operations.     

An algorithm for optimal free-form object matching

A novel method of matching for 3-D free-form objects (points vs. surface and surface vs. surface) is proposed. The method formulates the problem in terms of solution of a non-linear polynomial equation system, which can be solved robustly by the Interval Projected Polyhedron (IPP) algorithm. Two intrinsic surface properties, the Gaussian and the mean curvatures, are used as object features for matching. The related iso-curvature lines are used to establish the correspondence between two objects. The intersection points of these iso-curvature lines are calculated and sorted out to satisfy the Euclidean constraints from which the translation and rotation transformations are estimated. The performance of the proposed algorithm is also analyzed. This approach can cover global and partial matching, and be applied to automated inspection, copyright protection of NURBS models, and object recognition. Examples illustrate our technique.     

An Application of CLP: Checking the Correctness of Theorems in Geometry

Constraint Logic Programming can be advantageously used to deal with quadratic constraints stemming from the verification of planar geometry theorems. A hybrid symbolic-numeric representation involving radicals and multiple precision rationals is used to denote the results of quadratic equations. A unification-like algorithm tests for the equality of two expressions using that representation. The proposed approach also utilizes geometric transformations to reduce the number of quadratic equations defining geometric constructions involving circles and straight lines. A large number (512) of geometry theorems has been verified using the proposed approach. Those theorems had been proven correct using a significant more complex (exponential) approach in a treatise authored by Chou in 1988. Even though the proposed approach is based on verification—rather than strict correctness utilized by Chou—the efficiency attained is polynomial thus making the approach useful in classroom situations where a construction attempted by student has to be quickly validated or refuted.     

由表面模型表达的三维形体的一种消隐算法

提出基于知识规则的隐线消除新思路：依据该思路和８条结论,设计和实现了一种直接对表面模型进行了消隐算法。该算法对所需处理物体的数目、形状和位置均无限制;并通过考虑空间点和线的可视性的关系,使效率在一般情况下较传统方法提高了３倍。     

基于通视性原理的等高线化简算法研究

等高线自动综合历来是制图综合领域的重点和难点。目前已存在的等高线化简方法主要是一种几何上的逼近,由于综合处理后的等高线难以保持原有的形态特征,因此为了更好地进行等高线化简,首次提出了一种基于最大通视条件的新的等高线化简方法。该方法首先利用最大通视性原理划分等高线化简区域,并在每个划分的区域范围内,对曲线段进行弯曲嵌套层次分析和等级划分;然后在此基础上根据曲线段弯曲的等级和预先设定的阈值进行弯曲取舍。实验证明,该方法在控制自相交、特征点保持等方面均明显优于其他化简方法,化简后的形态保持,更符合等高线的综合要求。     

Fast Global Illumination on Dynamic Height Fields

We present a real-time method for rendering global illumination effects from large area and environmental lights on dynamic height fields. In contrast to previous work, our method handles inter-reflections (indirect lighting) and non-diffuse surfaces. To reduce sampling, we construct one multi-resolution pyramid for height variation to compute direct shadows, and another pyramid for each indirect bounce of incident radiance to compute inter-reflections. The basic principle is to sample the points blocking direct light, or shedding indirect light, from coarser levels of the pyramid the farther away they are from a given receiver point. We unify the representation of visibility and indirect radiance at discrete azimuthal directions (i.e., as a function of a single elevation angle) using the concept of a "casting set" of visible points along this direction whose contributions are collected in the basis of normalized Legendre polynomials. This analytic representation is compact, requires no precomputation, and allows efficient integration to produce the spherical visibility and indirect radiance signals. Sub-sampling visibility and indirect radiance, while shading with full-resolution surface normals, further increases performance without introducing noticeable artifacts. Our method renders 512×512 height fields (> 500K triangles) at 36Hz.     

The application of surface visibility and moldability to parting line generation

In molding, casting or forging processes, part surfaces are formed by the core, cavity and local tools in molding/casting or by the upper and lower dies and local tools in forging. In computer-aided design of dies and molds, automatic identification of surfaces molded/formed by these different tooling components is critical since the generation of parting lines depends on these surfaces, which would further influence the determination of parting surfaces, the creation of core and cavity blocks and the entire mold structure. In this paper, the surface partability and visibility are first proposed and its moldability is next presented. Considering the molding process as an instance, the concepts of core-, cavity- and the local tool-molded surfaces are defined. A methodology based on surface visibility and moldability to determine the potentially and actually moldable surfaces of these groups is developed. Since the generation of parting lines is a crucial preliminary design step in mold/die design life cycle, a new approach to determining the parting lines based on the proposed methodology is presented. A case study is used to test the methodology and approach, and to validate the efficiency in parting line generation of molded parts.     

Fast Perspective Views of Images Using One-Dimensional Operations

Generating arbitrary perspective views of images portraying 3D surfaces can involve extensive computation and data I/O time because of the problems in determining visibility, and performing hidden-point removal. Appropriate 1D transforms of an image can allow hidden-point removal and perspective projection to be performed on scan lines or columns of these transforms. Perspective view generation then reduces to a series of extremely fast 1D operations. As a result, exact perspective views of 3D surfaces of unlimited size can be generated very much more rapidly than hitherto possible, making this a feasible interactive tool in image analysis. Maximum speed is possible when entire data sets can be stored in random access memory (RAM). However, the scan-line nature of the algorithm also allows sequential processing of data stored on disk, and fast image transposition methods allow the generation of views of surfaces much larger than available memory.     

Finding circular shapes in an image on a pyramid architecture

The problem of finding circular shapes in an image using a pyramid architecture is considered. In this paper we have defined a new transformation that converts circles in an image to a family of straight lines allowing the problem to be converted to line detection which can be solved by Hough transform algorithms. Also, based on this new transformation we have developed two algorithms for circle detection using a pyramid architecture.     

Simultaneous Surface Approximation and Segmentation of Complex Objects

Deformable models represent a useful approach to approximate objects from collected data points. We propose to augment the basic approaches designed to handle mostly compact objects or objects of known topology.Our approach can fit simultaneously more than one curve or surface to approximate multiple topologically complex objects by using (1) the residual data points, (2) the badly fitting parts of the approximating surface, and (3) appropriate Boolean operations. In 2-D, B-snakes [3] are used to approximate each object (pattern). In 3-D, an analytical surface representation, based on the elements detected, is presented. The global representation of a 3-D object, in terms of elements and their connection, takes the form of B-spline and Bézier surfaces. A Bézier surface is used to connect different elements, and the connecting surface itself conforms to the data points nearby through energy minimization. This way, aG¹continuity surface is achieved for the underlying 3-D object.We present experiments on synthetic and real data in 2-D and 3-D. In these experiments, multiple complex patterns and objects with through holes are segmented. The system proceeds automatically without human interaction or any prior knowledge of the topology of the underlying object.     

利用光源投影坐标系处理SFS中的自阴影问题

对于由明暗恢复形状(SFS)问题来说，自阴影的存在是影响其重构效果的因素之一，应该加以特殊的处理。为了使自阴影的处理不延伸破坏其他区域，并能保护整体的重构形状，提出了一套从阴影分割、坐标系变换到数据拟合的自阴影处理方法。该方法使用了根据图像平面以及光源方向定义的光源投影坐标系，以降低自阴影处理问题的复杂性，从而使得可以通过逐行恢复图像内跨各自阴影数据区段高度变化量的方式来实现其基本处理要求，并可采用抛物线拟合的方法来完成重构的阴影区形状与其他部分的光滑连接。实验表明，该方法能有效地改善SFS的重构形状。     

A theory of the motion fields of curves

This article reports a study of the motion field generated by moving 3-D curves that are observed by a camera. We first discuss the relationship between optical flow and motion field and show that the assumptions made in the computation of the optical flow are a bit difficult to defend.We then go ahead to study the motion field of a general curve. We first study the general case of a curve moving nonrigidly and introduce the notion of isometric motion. In order to do this, we introduce the notion of spatiotemporal surface and study its differential properties up to the second order. We show that, contrary to what is commonly believed, the full motion field of the curve (i.e., the component tangent to the curve) cannot be recovered from this surface. We also give the equations that characterize the spatio-temporal surface completely up to a rigid transformation. Those equations are the expressions of the first and second fundamental forms and the Gauss and Codazzi-Mainardi equations. We then relate those differential expressions computed on the spatio-temporal surface to quantities that can be computed from the images intensities. The actual values depend upon the choice of the edge detector.We then show that the hypothesis of a rigid 3-D motion allows in general to recover the structure and the motion of the curve, in fact without explicitly computing the tangential motion field, at the cost of introducing the three-dimensional accelerations. We first study the motion field generated by the simplest kind of rigid 3-D curves, namely lines. This study is illuminating in that it paves the way for the study of general rigid curves and because of the useful results which are obtained. We then extend the results obtained in the case of lines to the case of general curves and show that at each point of the image curve two equations can be written relating the kinematic screw of the moving 3-D curve and its time derivative to quantities defined in the study of the general nonrigid motion that can be measured from the spatio-temporal surface and therefore from the image. This shows that the structure and the motion of the curve can be recovered from six image points only, without establishing any point correspondences.Finally we study the cooperation between motion and stereo in the framework of this theory. The use of two cameras instead of one allows us to get rid of the three-dimensional accelerations and the relations between the two spatio-temporal surfaces of the same rigidly moving 3-D curve can be used to help disambiguate stereo correspondences.     

基于联合特征匹配的多视角三维重建方法

本研究提出了一种基于角点与直线联合特征的三阶段匹配算法,依次经过相关匹配、松弛迭代匹配和最小平方中值法匹配三个步骤,并与此同时加入限定图像匹配区域、添加手工匹配点对以及局部直线匹配三个人机交互环节,将局部坐标系中得到的数据点进行三维数据融合到一个坐标系中,能较好解决视差不连续区域和遮挡区域的误匹配问题.实验证明该算法具有良好的运行效率和稳定性,能够对非平面物体进行精确三维重建并实现多视角显示.