A novel 3D ear reconstruction method using a single image

Abstract

To achieve denser 3D ear model from less controlled 2D image, we explore a 3D Ear Morphable Model (3DEMM) for 3D ear reconstruction using a single 2D ear image. Considering the unique structure of ear, we propose a novel dense corresponding method. The proposed method can overcome the shortcoming of optical flow based method and achieve pixel level dense correspondences based on physiological features of ear without choosing a reference ear. Novel 3D ear shape can be recovered from a single ear image based on the proposed 3D ear morphable model. Extensive experimental results have shown that our proposed method can obtain denser 3D ear model with lower cost and higher efficiency than existing methods.