3D dense reconstruction from 2D video sequence via 3D geometric segmentation

3D reconstruction is a major problem in computer vision. This paper considers the problem of reconstructing 3D structures, given a 2D video sequence. This problem is challenging since it is difficult to identify the trajectory of each object point/pixel over time. Traditional stereo 3D reconstruction methods and volumetric 3D reconstruction methods suffer from the blank wall problem, and the estimated dense depth map is not smooth, resulting in loss of actual geometric structures such as planes. To retain geometric structures embedded in the 3D scene, this paper proposes a novel surface fitting approach for 3D dense reconstruction. Specifically, we develop an expanded deterministic annealing algorithm to decompose 3D point cloud to multiple geometric structures, and estimate the parameters of each geometric structure. In this paper, we only consider plane structure, but our methodology can be extended to other parametric geometric structures such as spheres, cylinders, and cones. The experimental results show that the new approach is able to segment 3D point cloud into appropriate geometric structures and generate accurate 3D dense depth map. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.