Optical 3D imaging and visualization of concealed objects

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This paper gives new insights on optical 3D imagery. In this paper we explore the advantages of laser imagery to form a three-dimensional image of the scene. 3D laser imaging can be used for three-dimensional medical imaging and surveillance because of ability to identify tumors or concealed objects. We consider the problem of 3D reconstruction based upon 2D angle-dependent laser images. The objective of this new 3D laser imaging is to provide users a complete 3D reconstruction of objects from available 2D data limited in number. The 2D laser data used in this paper come from simulations that are based on the calculation of the laser interactions with the different meshed objects of the scene of interest or from experimental 2D laser images. We show that combining the Radom transform on 2D laser images with the Maximum Intensity Projection can generate 3D views of the considered scene from which we can extract the 3D concealed object in real time. With different original numerical or experimental examples, we investigate the effects of the input contrasts. We show the robustness and the stability of the method. We have developed a new patented method of 3D laser imaging based on three-dimensional reflective tomographic reconstruction algorithms and an associated visualization method. In this paper we present the global 3D reconstruction and visualization procedures.