3D scanning of cultural heritage with consumer depth cameras

Three dimensional reconstruction of cultural heritage objects is an expensive and time-consuming process. Recent consumer real-time depth acquisition devices, like Microsoft Kinect, allow very fast and simple acquisition of 3D views. However 3D scanning with such devices is a challenging task due to the limited accuracy and reliability of the acquired data. This paper introduces a 3D reconstruction pipeline suited to use consumer depth cameras as hand-held scanners for cultural heritage objects. Several new contributions have been made to achieve this result. They include an ad-hoc filtering scheme that exploits the model of the error on the acquired data and a novel algorithm for the extraction of salient points exploiting both depth and color data. Then the salient points are used within a modified version of the ICP algorithm that exploits both geometry and color distances to precisely align the views even when geometry information is not sufficient to constrain the registration. The proposed method, although applicable to generic scenes, has been tuned to the acquisition of sculptures and in this connection its performance is rather interesting as the experimental results indicate

Image-guided ToF depth upsampling: a survey

Recently, there has been remarkable growth of interest in the development and applications of time-of-flight (ToF) depth cameras. Despite the permanent improvement of their characteristics, the practical applicability of ToF cameras is still limited by low resolution and quality of depth measurements. This has motivated many researchers to combine ToF cameras with other sensors in order to enhance and upsample depth images. In this paper, we review the approaches that couple ToF depth images with high-resolution optical images. Other classes of upsampling methods are also briefly discussed. Finally, we provide an overview of performance evaluation tests presented in the related studies

A Brief Survey of Image-Based Depth Upsampling

Recently, there has been remarkable growth of interest in the development and applications of Time-of-Flight (ToF) depth cameras. However, despite the permanent improvement of their characteristics, the practical applicability of ToF cameras is still limited by low resolution and quality of depth measurements. This has motivated many researchers to combine ToF cameras with other sensors in order to enhance and upsample depth images. In this paper, we compare ToF cameras to three image-based techniques for depth recovery, discuss the upsampling problem and survey the approaches that couple ToF depth images with high-resolution optical images. Other classes of upsampling methods are also mentioned

Edge adaptive filtering of depth maps for mobile devices

Abstract. Mobile phone cameras have an almost unlimited depth of field, and therefore the images captured with them have wide areas in focus. When the depth of field is digitally manipulated through image processing, accurate perception of depth in a captured scene is important. Capturing depth data requires advanced imaging methods. In case a stereo lens system is used, depth information is calculated from the disparities between stereo frames. The resulting depth map is often noisy or doesn’t have information for every pixel. Therefore it has to be filtered before it is used for emphasizing depth. Edges must be taken into account in this process to create natural-looking shallow depth of field images. In this study five filtering methods are compared with each other. The main focus is the Fast Bilateral Solver, because of its novelty and high reported quality. Mobile imaging requires fast filtering in uncontrolled environments, so optimizing the processing time of the filters is essential. In the evaluations the depth maps are filtered, and the quality and the speed is determined for every method. The results show that the Fast Bilateral Solver filters the depth maps well, and can handle noisy depth maps better than the other evaluated methods. However, in mobile imaging it is slow and needs further optimization.Reunatietoinen syvyyskarttojen suodatus mobiililaitteilla. Tiivistelmä. Matkapuhelimien kameroissa on lähes rajoittamaton syväterävyysalue, ja siksi niillä otetuissa kuvissa laajat alueet näkyvät tarkennettuina. Digitaalisessa syvyysterävyysalueen muokkauksessa tarvitaan luotettava syvyystieto. Syvyysdatan hankinta vaatii edistyneitä kuvausmenetelmiä. Käytettäessä stereokameroita syvyystieto lasketaan kuvien välisistä dispariteeteista. Tuloksena syntyvä syvyyskartta on usein kohinainen, tai se ei sisällä syvyystietoa joka pikselille. Tästä syystä se on suodatettava ennen käyttöä syvyyden korostamiseen. Tässä prosessissa reunat ovat otettava huomioon, jotta saadaan luotua luonnollisen näköisiä kapean syväterävyysalueen kuvia. Tässä tutkimuksessa verrataan viittä suodatusmenetelmää keskenään. Eniten keskitytään nopeaan bilateraaliseen ratkaisijaan, johtuen sen uutuudesta ja korkeasta tuloksen laadusta. Mobiililaitteella kuvantamisen vaatimuksena on nopea suodatus hallitsemattomissa olosuhteissa, joten suodattimien prosessointiajan optimointi on erittäin tärkeää. Vertailuissa syvyyskuvat suodatetaan ja suodatuksen laatu ja nopeus mitataan jokaiselle menetelmälle. Tulokset osoittavat, että nopea bilateraalinen ratkaisija suodattaa syvyyskarttoja hyvin ja osaa käsitellä kohinaisia syvyyskarttoja paremmin kuin muut tarkastellut menetelmät. Mobiilikuvantamiseen se on kuitenkin hidas ja tarvitsee pidemmälle menevää optimointia