Reflectance Function Estimation and Shape Recovery from Image Sequence of a Rotating Object

In this paper we describe a technique for surface recovery of a rotating object illuminated under a collinear light source (where the light source lies on or near the optical axis). We show that the surface reeectance function can be directly estimated from the image sequence without any assumption on the reeectance property of the object surface. From the image sequence, the 3D locations of some singular surface points are calculated and their brightness values are extracted for the estimation of the reeectance function. We also show that the surface can be recovered by using shading information in two images of the rotating object. Iteratively using the rst-order Taylor serious approximation and the estimated reeectance function, the depth and orientation of the surface can be recovered simultaneously. The experimental results on real image sequences of both matte and specular surfaces demonstrate that the technique is feasible and robust.