An active stereoscopic system for iterative 3D surface reconstruction

Abstract

For most traditional active 3D surface reconstruction methods, a common feature is that the object surface is scanned uniformly, so that the final 3D model contains a very large number of points, which requires huge storage space, and makes the transmission and visualization time-consuming. A post-process then is necessary to reduce the data by decimation. In this paper, we present a newly active stereoscopic system based on iterative spot pattern projection. The 3D surface reconstruction process begins with a regular spot pattern, and then the pattern is modified progressively according to the object’s surface geometry. The adaptation is controlled by the estimation of the local surface curvature of the actual reconstructed 3D surface. The reconstructed 3D model is optimized: it retains all the morphological information about the object with a minimal number of points. Therefore, it requires little storage space, and no further mesh simplification is needed.