We introduce a convex relaxation framework to optimally
minimize continuous surface ratios. The key idea is to minimize
the continuous surface ratio by solving a sequence
of convex optimization problems. We show that such minimal
ratios are superior to traditionally used minimal surface
formulations in that they do not suffer from a shrinking
bias and no longer require the choice of a regularity parameter.
The absence of a shrinking bias in the minimal ratio
model is proven analytically. Furthermore we demonstrate
that continuous ratio optimization can be applied to derive
a new algorithm for reconstructing three-dimensional
silhouette-consistent objects from multiple views. Experimental
results confirm that our approach allows to accurately
reconstruct deep concavities even without the specification
of tuning parameters.