Robust acquisition of 3D informations from short image sequences

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of 3D reconstruction from a set of viewpoints on a short baseline. Its main contribution is the development of a robust algorithm which can extract 3D informations from a set of images taken with a very small baseline, even in the presence of significant occlusion. To achieve this goal, we use a multi-pass process that works layer by layer. In each pass we begin with a “space carving” step which is made robust through some morphological operations. Then we introduce an original technique to solve the ambiguity inherent to “space carving” in the case of short baseline. Once we have a voxel representation of the objects, we propose a method based on differential geometry to build a smooth mesh. Results are presented, demonstrating the efficiency and usefulness of the method.