Determining Shapes of Transparent Objects from Two Polarization Images

Abstract

In the field of computer vision, beneficial methods of measuring surface shape of transparent objects such as glasses have rarely been proposed. In this paper, we propose a convenient and inexpensive method for measuring the surface shape of transparent objects. The degree of polarization of the light reflected from the object surface depends on the reflection angle which, in turn, depends on the object's surface normal# thus, by measuring the degree of polarization, we are able to calculate the surface normal of the object. But unfortunately, the relationship between degree of polarization and surface normal is not 1 to 1# thus, to obtain the true surface normal, wehave to resolvethisambiguity problem. In this paper, we explain the method of resolving the ambiguityby using the differential-geometrical property of the object surface