Three-dimensional kaleidoscopic imaging

Abstract

We introduce three-dimensional kaleidoscopic imaging, a promising alternative for recording multi-view imagery. The main limitation of multi-view reconstruction techniques is the limited number of views that are available from multi-camera systems, especially for dynamic scenes. Our new system is based on imaging an object inside a kaleidoscopic mirror system. We show that this approach can generate a large number of high-quality views well distributed over the hemisphere surrounding the object in a single shot. In comparison to existing multi-view systems, our method offers a number of advantages: it is possible to operate with a single camera, the individual views are perfectly synchronized, and they have the same radiometric and colorimetric properties. We describe the setup both theoretically, and provide methods for a practical implementation. Enabling interfacing to standard multi-view algorithms for further processing is an important goal of our techniques.