High-Contrast Color-Stripe Pattern for Rapid Structured-Light Range Imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces new color-stripe patterns for rapid structured-light range imaging, improving accuracy and reducing ambiguities in single and two-shot methods by maximizing color contrast.

Contribution

It proposes novel methods for selecting stripe colors and designing patterns that enhance contrast and reliability in one-shot and two-shot structured-light imaging.

Findings

Maximizing color contrast reduces ambiguities from object surface colors.

Two-shot imaging further diminishes ambiguities by contrasting consecutive frames.

Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.

Abstract

For structured-light range imaging, color stripes can be used for increasing the number of distinguishable light patterns compared to binary BW stripes. Therefore, an appropriate use of color patterns can reduce the number of light projections and range imaging is achievable in single video frame or in "one shot". On the other hand, the reliability and range resolution attainable from color stripes is generally lower than those from multiply projected binary BW patterns since color contrast is affected by object color reflectance and ambient light. This paper presents new methods for selecting stripe colors and designing multiple-stripe patterns for "one-shot" and "two-shot" imaging. We show that maximizing color contrast between the stripes in one-shot imaging reduces the ambiguities resulting from colored object surfaces and limitations in sensor/projector resolution. Two-shot imaging adds an extra video frame and maximizes the color contrast between the first and second video frames to diminish the ambiguities even further. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented one-shot and two-shot color-stripe imaging schemes.