Evaluating the effect of diffuse light on photometric stereo reconstruction

• Published in: Machine vision and applications Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 199 - 210
• Main Authors: Angelopoulou, Maria E., Petrou, Maria
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.01.2014; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Communications Engineering; Computer Science; Computer science; control theory; systems; Diffusion; Exact sciences and technology; Illuminance; Illumination; Image Processing and Computer Vision; Image reconstruction; Incident light; Light; Networks; Original Paper; Pattern Recognition; Pattern recognition. Digital image processing. Computational geometry; Photometry; Quality assessment; Vision systems; 3D face reconstruction; Photometric stereo; Ambient (diffuse) light; Computer vision; Image processing; Face recognition; Convex surface; Image reconstruction; Surface reconstruction; Luminance; Facies; Illumination; Tridimensional image; Robustness; Stereopsis; Photometry
• ISSN: 0932-8092; 1432-1769
• DOI: 10.1007/s00138-013-0507-z

Photometric stereo surface reconstruction requires each input image to be associated with a particular 3D illumination vector. This signifies that the subject should be illuminated in turn by various directional illumination sources. In real life, this directionality may be reduced by ambient illumination, which is typically present as a diffuse component of the incident light. This work assesses the photometric stereo reconstruction quality for various ratios of ambient to directional illuminance and provides a reference for the robustness of photometric stereo with respect to that illuminance ratio. In our analysis, we focus on the face reconstruction application of photometric stereo, as faces are convex objects with rich surface variation, thus providing a suitable platform for photometric stereo reconstruction quality evaluation. Results demonstrate that photometric stereo renders realistic reconstructions of the given surface for ambient illuminance as high as nine times the illuminance of the directional light component.