Thermal Polarimetric Multi-view Stereo

TL;DR

This paper presents a new thermal polarimetric multi-view stereo method for detailed 3D shape reconstruction that is illumination- and material-independent, leveraging LWIR polarization to improve accuracy on complex objects.

Contribution

It introduces a general theory of polarization observation and a novel multi-view thermal polarimetric reconstruction technique that overcomes ambiguities present in visible polarization methods.

Findings

Effective reconstruction of fine details in transparent and translucent objects

Outperforms existing techniques in 3D shape accuracy

LWIR polarimetric imaging is free from certain ambiguities

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel method for detailed 3D shape reconstruction utilizing thermal polarization cues. Unlike state-of-the-art methods, the proposed approach is independent of illumination and material properties. In this paper, we formulate a general theory of polarization observation and show that long-wave infrared (LWIR) polarimetric imaging is free from the ambiguities that affect visible polarization analyses. Subsequently, we propose a method for recovering detailed 3D shapes using multi-view thermal polarimetric images. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach effectively reconstructs fine details in transparent, translucent, and heterogeneous objects, outperforming existing techniques.