Shape from Second-bounce of Light Transport

This paper describes a method to recover scene geometry from the second-bounce of light transport. We show that form factors (up to a scaling ambiguity) can be derived from the second-bounce component of light transport in a Lambertian case. The form factors carry information of the geometric relationship between every pair of scene points, i.e., distance between scene points and relative surface orientations. Modelling the scene as polygonal, we develop a method to recover the scene geometry up to a scaling ambiguity from the form factors by optimization. Unlike other shape-from-intensity methods, our method simultaneously estimates depth and surface normal; therefore, our method can handle discontinuous surfaces as it can avoid surface normal integration. Various simulation and real-world experiments demonstrate the correctness of the proposed theory of shape recovery from light transport.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ECCV
• Keywords: Computer Vision, ECCV 2010, Form Factors, Light Transport, Scene Geometry