Monocular Template-Based 3D Surface Reconstruction: Convex Inextensible and Nonconvex Isometric Methods
Florent Brunet, Adrien Bartoli, Richard Hartley
Computer Vision and Image Understanding, April 2014
Abstract
    We study the 3D reconstruction of an isometric surface from point
    correspondences between a template and a single input image. The
    template shows the surface flat and fronto-parallel. We propose
    three new methods. The first two use a convex relaxation of
    isometry to inextensibility. They are formulated as Second Order
    Cone Programs (SOCP). The first proposed method is point-wise
    (it reconstructs only the input point correspondences) while the
    second proposed method uses a smooth and continuous surface model,
    based on Free-Form Deformations (FFD). The third proposed method
    uses the ‘true’ nonconvex isometric constraint and the same
    continuous surface model. It is formulated with Nonlinear
    Least-Squares and can thus be solved with the efficient
    Levenberg-Marquardt minimization method. The proposed approaches
    may be combined in a single pipeline whereby one of the convex
    approximations is used to initialize the nonconvex method. Our
    contributions solve two important limitations of current state of
    the art: our convex methods are the first ones to handle noise in
    both the template and image points, and our nonconvex method is the
    first one to use ‘true’ isometric constraints. Our experimental
    results on simulated and real data show that our convex point-wise
    method and our nonconvex method outperform respectively current
    initialization and refinement methods in 3D reconstructed surface
    accuracy.