Estimating Light Position and Surface Reflectance from Specular Reflection under Perspective Projection

In this paper, we propose a new method for estimating reflection properties of a real object surface from a single specular component image, as well as the light source position. Polarization is used for separating the diffuse and specular reflection components. Different from previous approaches, which heavily assumed both distant viewpoint and illuminant position, our method can work even under short distance of them. Given a specular reflection component, the method begins with estimating the position of the light source. At the same time, the initial values of reflectance parameters are also estimated by linearizing the reflection model with a variable transformation. The estimated illuminant position and reflection parameters are then refined based on the original reflection model.