What you'll learn

Skills you'll gain

There are 6 modules in this course

In order to estimate scene properties (depth, surface orientation, material properties, etc.) we first define several important radiometric concepts, such as, light source intensity, surface illumination, surface brightness, image brightness and surface reflectance. Then, we tackle the challenging problem of shape from shading - recovering the shape of a surface from its shading in a single image. Next, we show that if multiple images of a scene of known reflectance are taken while changing the illumination direction, the surface normal at each scene point can be computed. This method, called photometric stereo, provides a dense surface normal map that can be integrated to obtain surface shape. Next, we discuss depth from defocus, which uses the limited depth of field of the camera to estimate scene structure. From a small number of images taken by changing the focus setting of the lens, a dense depth of the scene is recovered. Finally, we present a suite of techniques that use active illumination (the projection of light patterns onto the scene) to get precise 3D reconstructions of the scene. These active illumination methods are the workhorse of factory automation. They are used on manufacturing lines to assemble products and inspect their visual quality. They are also extensively used in other domains such as driverless cars, robotics, surveillance, medical imaging and special effects in movies.

Radiometry and Reflectance

Photometric Stereo

Shape from Shading

Depth from Defocus

Active Illumination Methods

Explore more from Algorithms