Evaluation and Compensation of the Effect of Dirt on Time-of-Flight 3D Imaging Systems

Abstract

In the past few years, 3D imaging technology has received a lot of attention. Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras based on the indirect ToF principle calculate depth information by measuring the phase shift between the emitted periodic signal and the reflected signal. In this work, we aim to study the effect of dirt on 3D imaging systems quantitatively. To this end, ten sheets with different transmittances, between 50% and 100% are used. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time we provide standardized methods for evaluating the effect of dirt on protective covers in the depth estimation of ``flash lidar''. The experiments have shown that the depth measurements obtained using the multi-frequency estimation method are more accurate in the presence of dust than the single-frequency estimation method.