Shape and reflectance recovery based on a photometric stereo approach

An automatic three-dimensional surface recovery system from the color images based on photometric stereo technique is presented. The system consists of four steps. Firstly, the color images at the fixed viewpoint under different illumination directions are captured and preprocessed. Secondly, surface normal and reflectance properties are computed by the photometric stereo approach. Thirdly, the surface height is integrated from the gradient fields by an improved integration approach combining the Gauss kernel function. Finally, three-dimensional model of the realistic object are obtained by texture mapping. The results on the real data are given and indicate that the proposed system can recover the shape and reflectance well.