Surface reflectance and normal estimation from photometric stereo

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

10 Scopus Citations
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Author(s)

  • Qingxiong Yang
  • Narendra Ahuja

Related Research Unit(s)

Detail(s)

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)793-802
Journal / PublicationComputer Vision and Image Understanding
Volume116
Issue number7
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2012

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new photometric stereo method for estimating diffuse reflection and surface normal from color images. Using dichromatic reflection model, we introduce surface chromaticity as a matching invariant for photometric stereo, which serves as the foundation of the theory of this paper. An extremely simple and robust reflection components separation method is proposed based on the invariant. Our separation method differs from most previous methods which either assume dependencies among pixels or require segmentation. We also show that a linear relationship between the image color and the surface normal can be obtained based on this invariant. The linear relationship turns the surface normal estimation problem into a linear system that can be solved exactly or via least-squares optimization. We present experiments on both synthetic and real images, which demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Research Area(s)

  • Chromaticity, Dichromatic reflection model, Photometric stereo, Reflection components separation, Specular reflection

Citation Format(s)

Surface reflectance and normal estimation from photometric stereo. / Yang, Qingxiong; Ahuja, Narendra.
In: Computer Vision and Image Understanding, Vol. 116, No. 7, 07.2012, p. 793-802.

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review