3D reconstruction of concave surfaces using polarisation imaging

This paper presents a novel algorithm for improved shape recovery using polarisation-based photometric stereo. The majority of previous research using photometric stereo involves 3D reconstruction using both the diffuse and specular components of light; however, this paper suggests the use of the specular component only as it is the only form of light that comes directly off the surface without subsurface scattering or interreflections. Experiments were carried out on both real and synthetic surfaces. Real images were obtained using a polarisation-based photometric stereo device while synthetic images were generated using PovRay® software. The results clearly demonstrate that the proposed method can extract three-dimensional (3D) surface information effectively even for concave surfaces with complex texture and surface reflectance.