A novel 3D convex surface reconstruction method based on visual hull

3D reconstruction is one of main techniques for computer vision. A novel 3D convex surface reconstruction method is presented in this paper, which is based on visual hull principle. The real object is supposed to be surrounded by a 3D grid bounding box filled with voxels. A series of images of the object are captured by a calibrated camera in different locations. For each image, a series of virtual rays, each of which starts from an image silhouette point and drills through the camera center, intersect the voxels in bounding box to obtain a number of potential object surface points. Afterward, the potential surface points are projected onto the other images to eliminate the pseudo surface points which must locate outside the object image area in at least one image. When all images are processed, the surface points of whole object are obtained and then 3D surface is reconstructed. The experiment illuminates the feasibility and validity of our approach.