A Robust Method for Shape from Shading Using Genetic Algorithm Based on Matrix Code

In this paper, a method for reconstructing a 3-D shape of an object from a 2-D shading image using a Genetic Algorithm (GA), which is an optimizing technique based on mechanisms of natural selection. The 3D-shape is recovered through the analysis of the gray levels in a single image of the scene. This problem is ill-posed except if some additional assumptions are made. In the proposed method, shape from shading is addressed as an energy minimization problem. The traditional deterministic approach provides efficient algorithms to solve this problem in terms of time but reaches its limits since the energy associated with shape from shading can contain multiple deep local minima. Genetic Algorithm is used as an alternative approach which is efficient at exploring the entire search space. The Algorithm is tested in both synthetic and real image and is found to perform accurate and efficient results.