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Evaluating the effect of diffuse light on photometric stereo reconstruction

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Dr. Vasileios Argyriou and Dr. Stefanos Zafeiriou in the system setup.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

    Maria E. Angelopoulou & Maria Petrou

Authors
  1. Maria E. Angelopoulou
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  2. Maria Petrou
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria E. Angelopoulou.

Additional information

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission FP7-ICT Cognitive Systems, Interaction and Robotics under the contract #270180 (NOPTILUS).

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Angelopoulou, M.E., Petrou, M. Evaluating the effect of diffuse light on photometric stereo reconstruction. Machine Vision and Applications 25, 199–210 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00138-013-0507-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00138-013-0507-z

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