Some illumination models for industrial applications of photometric stereo

Abstract

Among the possible sources of error in 3D-reconstruction using the photometric stereo technique, lighting modelling is often neglected, though it can create a dramatic large-scale bias. In this paper, after recalling the physical definition of a primary Lambertian source (isotropic lightings), we show how to derive a lighting model for several real-world scenarios, including directional lightings, nearby sources and extended planar illuminants. Finally, we show how to calibrate general spatially-varying lightings within a plane, in the case where explicitely modelling the lightings would be tedious.