Shape from silhouette outlines using an adaptive dandelion model

In this paper we study the problem of shape from silhouette outlines (SFO) using a novel adaptive dandelion model. SFO reconstructs a 3D model using only the outmost silhouette contours and produces a solid called the ‘‘bounding hull’’. The dandelion model is composed of a pencil of organized line segments emitted from a common point which samples the bounding hull surface in regularly distributed orientations with the ending points serving as sampling points. The orientations and the topology of the line segments are derived from a geodesic sphere. The lengths of the line segments are computed by cutting rays in 2D with silhouette outlines. Based on the subdivision structure of the geodesic sphere, the sampling resolution can be refined adaptively until the desired precision is achieved. Finally a manifold mesh is extracted from the dandelion model. 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.