Near Field Photometric Stereo with Point Light Sources

Shape recovery of an object based on shading variations resulting from different light sources has recently been reconsidered. Improvements have been made that allow for the photometric stereo approach to serve as a competitive alternative to other shape reconstruction methods. However, most photometric stereo methods tend to ignore factors that are relevant in practical applications. The setup considered in this paper tackles photometric stereo reconstruction in the case of a specific near-field imaging. This means that both the camera and the light sources are close to the imaged object, where close can be loosely considered as a setup having similar distances between lights, camera, and object. The known challenges that characterize the problem involve perspective viewing geometry, point light sources, and images that may include shadowed regions. Here, we pay special attention to the question of how to faithfully model these aspects and at the same time design an efficient and robust numerical solver....