Skip to main content
Log in

Generalised Epipolar Constraints

  • Published:
International Journal of Computer Vision Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper we will discuss structure and motion problems for curved surfaces. These will be studied using the silhouettes or apparent contours in the images. The problem of determining camera motion from the apparent contours of curved three-dimensional surfaces, is studied. It will be shown how special points, called epipolar tangency points or frontier points, can be used to solve this problem. A generalised epipolar constraint is introduced, which applies to points, curves, as well as to apparent contours of surfaces. The theory is developed for both continuous and discrete motion, known and unknown orientation, calibrated and uncalibrated, perspective, weak perspective and orthographic cameras. Results of an iterative scheme to recover the epipolar line structure from real image sequences using only the outlines of curved surfaces, is presented. A statistical evaluation is performed to estimate the stability of the solution. It is also shown how the motion of the camera from a sequence of images can be obtained from the relative motion between image pairs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Åström, K. 1996. Invariancy methods for points, curves and surfaces in computational vision. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Mathematics, Lund University, Sweden.

  • Åström, K., Cipolla, R., and Giblin, P.J. 1996. Generalised epipolar constraints. In Proc. 4th European Conf. on Computer Vision, B. Buxton and R. Cipolla (Eds.), vol. 1065 of Lecture notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag: Cambridge, UK, pp. 97–108.

    Google Scholar 

  • Åström, K. and Heyden, A. 1999. Stochastic analysis of scale space smoothing. Advances of Applied Probability.

  • Blake, A. and Yuille, A.L. (Eds.). 1992. Active Vision, MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruce, J.W. and Giblin, P.J. 1992. Curves and Singularities, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press.

  • Carlsson, S. 1994. Sufficient image structure for3Dmotion and shape estimation. In Proc. 3rd European Conf. on Computer Vision, J.-O. Eklundh (Ed.), Springer-Verlag: Stockholm, Sweden, vol. I, pp. 83–91.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cipolla, R. 1991. Active visual inference of surface shape. Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford. Also published in Springer-Verlag as LNCS 1016 (1995).

  • Cipolla, R., Åström, K., and Giblin, P.J. 1995. Motion from the frontier of curved surfaces. In Proc. 5th Int. Conf. on Computer Vision, MIT: Boston, MA, pp. 269–275.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cipolla, R. and Blake, A. 1990. The dynamic analysis of apparent contours. In Proc. 3rd Int. Conf. on Computer Vision, Osaka, Japan, pp. 616–623.

  • Cipolla, R. and Blake, A. 1992. Surface shape from the deformation of apparent contours. Int. Journal of Computer Vision, 9(2):83–112.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cipolla, R., Fletcher, G., and Giblin, P. 1996. Following cusps. Int. Journal of Computer Vision.

  • Coxeter, H.S.M. 1993. The Real Projective Plane, 3rd edition, Springer-Verlag: New York, NY, USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Curwen, R. and Blake, A. 1992. Dynamic contours: Real-time active splines. In Active Vision, A. Blake and A. Yuille (Eds.), MIT Press, pp. 39–58.

  • Faugeras, O. 1993. Three-Dimensional Computer Vision. MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Faugeras, O.D. 1992. What can be seen in three dimensions with an uncalibrated stereo rig? In Proc. 2nd European Conf. on Computer Vision, G. Sandini (Ed.), Springer-Verlag: Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy, pp. 563–578.

    Google Scholar 

  • Faugeras, O.D., Luong, Q.-T., and Maybank, S. 1992. Camera selfcalibration: Theory and experiment. In Proc. 2nd European Conf. on Computer Vision, G. Sandini (Ed.), Springer-Verlag: Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy, pp. 321–334.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fletcher, G. 1996. Curves and surfaces. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Pure Mathematics, Liverpool University, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foley, J.D., van Dam, A., Feiner, S.K., and Hughes, J.F. 1990. Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

  • Giblin, P.J., Pollick, F.E., and Rycroft, J.E. 1994. Recovery of an unknown axis or rotation from the profiles of a rotating surface. J. Opt. Soc. America, 11(A):1976–1984.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giblin, P.J. and Weiss, R. 1987. Reconstruction of surfaces from profiles. In Proc. 1st Int. Conf. on Computer Vision, London, pp. 136–144.

  • Giblin, P.J. and Weiss, R.S. 1995. Epipolar curves on surfaces. Image and Vision Computing, 13:33–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heyden, A. and Åström, K. 1997. Simplifications of multilinear forms for sequences of images. Image and Vision Computing, 15(10):749–757.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joshi, T., Ahuja, N., and Ponce, J. 1995. Structure and motion estimates from dynamic silhouettes under perspective projection. In Proc. 5th Int. Conf. on Computer Vision, MIT: Boston, MA, pp. 290–295.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kass, M., Witkin, A., and Terzopoulos, D. 1987. Snakes: Active contour models. Int. Journal of Computer Vision, 1(4):321–331.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koenderink, J.J. 1990. Solid Shape. MIT Press.

  • Longuet-Higgins, H.C. 1981. A computer algorithm for reconstructing a scene from two projections. Nature, 293:133–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luenberger, D.G. 1984. Linear and Nonlinear Programming. Addison-Wesley.

  • Luong, Q.T., Deriche, R., Faugeras, O.D., and Papadopoulo, T. 1993. On determining the fundamental matrix: Analysis of different methods and experimental results. Technical Report RR-1894, INRIA.

  • Luong, Q. and Vieville, T. 1994. Canonic representations for the geometries of multiple projective views. In Proc. 3rd European Conf. on Computer Vision, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 589–599.

  • Porrill, J. and Pollard, S.B. 1991. Curve matching and stereo calibration. Image and Vision Computing, 9(1):45–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rieger, J.H. 1986. Three dimensional motion from fixed points of a deforming profile curve. Optics Letters, 11:123–125.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sinclair, D., Christiansenn, H., and Rothwell, C. 1995. Using the relation between a plane projectivity and the fundamental matrix. In Proc. 9th Scandinavian Conference on Image Analysis, pp. 181–188.

  • Stefanovic, P. 1973. Relative orientation—a newappraoch. ITC Journal, 3:417–448.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E.H. 1959. A rational algebraic formulation of the problem of relative orientation. Photogrammetric Record, 14(3):152–159.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaillant, R. and Faugeras, O.D. 1992. Using extremal boundaries for 3D object modelling. IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 14(2):157–173.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vijayakumar, B., Kriegman, D., and Ponce, J. 1995. Invariant-based recognition of complex 3D curved objects from image contours. In Proc. 5th Int. Conf. on Computer Vision, MIT: Boston, MA, pp. 508–514.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vijayakumar, B., Kriegman, D., and Ponce, J. 1996. Structure and motion of curved 3D objects from monocular silhouettes. In Proc. Conf. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 327–334.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Åström, K., Cipolla, R. & Giblin, P. Generalised Epipolar Constraints. International Journal of Computer Vision 33, 51–72 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008113231241

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008113231241

Navigation