Composite phase-shifting algorithm for three-dimensional shape compression

Abstract

With recent advancements in 3-D imaging and computational technologies, acquiring 3-D data is unprecedentedly simple. However, the use of 3-D data is still limited due to the size of 3-D data, especially 3-D video data. Therefore, the study of how to store and transmit the 3-D data in real time is vital. We address a technique that encodes a 3-D surface shape into a single 24-bit color image. In particular, this image is generated by advanced computer graphics tools with two primary color channels encoded as sine and cosine fringe images, and the third chan- nel encoded as a stair image to unwrap the phase obtained from the two fringe images. An arbitrary 3-D shape can then be recovered from a single image. We test 3-D shapes with differing levels of complexity along with various image formats. Experiments demonstrate that, without significantly losing the shape quality, the compression ratio can go up to 1:36.86, compared with the native smallest possible 3-D data represen- tation method. © 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. DOI: 10.1117/1.3456632