International Business Machines Corporation

Brown University

Gabriel Taubin

Andre Pierre Gueziec

Fausto Bernardini

Holly Edith Rushmeier

Daniel Moreno

Claudio T Silva

Laurent Balmelli

Rudolf Maarten Bolle

Rakesh Mohan

Norman C Haas

Jonathan H Connell

Frank J Bossen

Francis Lazarus

Jarek Jaroslaw Rossignac

Paul Borrel

Bruce David D'Amora

William Pettit Horn

James Thomas Klosowski

Henning Biermann

Joshua D Mittleman

José Gomes

Christopher J Morris

Silvio Savarese

Peter Lawrence Williams

Joao Luiz Dihl Comba

Joseph Shannon Baird Mitchell

Wook Yeon Hwang

Fatih Calakli

A system and method to capture the surface geometry a three-dimensional object in a scene using unsynchronized structured lighting is disclosed. The method and system includes a pattern projector configured and arranged to project a sequence of image patterns onto the scene at a pattern frame rate, a camera configured and arranged to capture a sequence of unsynchronized image patterns of the scene at an image capture rate, and a processor configured and arranged to synthesize a sequence of synchronized image frames from the unsynchronized image patterns of the scene. Each of the synchronized image frames corresponds to one image pattern of the sequence of image patterns.

Method and system for unsynchronized structured lighting

A system and method to calibrate an uncollimated laser diode for three-dimensional imaging applications. A method includes providing an optical comparator having an uncollimated laser diode as a light source to generate a shadow with sharp boundaries when used to illuminate an opaque occluder, wherein a two lines source model of light propagation is used to describe a behavior of the uncollimated laser diode, the two lines source model defined by two three-dimensional (3D) lines as model parameters, the uncollimated laser diode calibrated by estimating the two lines as a function of a sample of a ray field emitted by the uncollimated laser diode.

System and method to calibrate an uncollimated laser diode for 3D imaging applications

Techniques for scanning through structured light techniques that are robust to global illumination effects and that provide an accurate determination of position as provided. According to some aspects, described techniques may be computationally efficient compared with conventional techniques by making use of a novel approach of selecting frequencies of patterns for projection onto a target that mathematically enable efficient calculations. In particular, the selected frequencies may be chosen so that there is a known relationship between the frequencies. This relationship may be derived from Chebyshev polynomials and also relates the chosen frequencies to a low frequency pattern.

Techniques for shape measurement using high frequency patterns and related systems and methods

A method obtains the shape of a target by projecting and recording images of dual frequency fringe patterns. Locations in each projector image plane are encoded into the patterns and projected onto die target while images are recorded. The resulting images show the patterns superimposed onto the target. The images are decoded to recover relative phase values for the patterns primary and dual frequencies. The relative phases are unwrapped into absolute phases and converted back to projector image plane locations. The relation between camera pixels and decoded projector locations is saved as a correspondence image representing the measured shape of the target. Correspondence images with a geometric triangulation method create a 3D model of the target. Dual frequency hinge patterns have a low frequency embedded into a high frequency sinusoidal, both frequencies are recovered in closed form by the decoding method, thus, enabling direct phase unwrapping.

System and methods for shape measurement using dual frequency fringe pattern

The invention is a computer implemented method, device, system, or article for reconstructing a surface of an object. In particular, the invention comprises estimating a non-convex hull signed distance function parameters from a data set of an object and evaluating the non-convex hull signed distance function on vertices of a volumetric mesh. The invention further comprises approximating the zero level set of the non-convex hull signed distance function by a polygonal mesh using an isosurface algorithm to provide surface reconstruction of an object.

Non-convex hull surfaces

A method that estimates the coordinates of the calibration points in the projector image plane using local homographies obtained from the imaging camera. First, a dense set of correspondences between projector and camera pixels is found by projecting onto the calibration object an identical pattern sequence as the one later projected when scanning the target, reusing most of the software components written for the scanning application. Second, the set of correspondences is used to compute a group of local homographies that allow projection back of any of the points in the calibration object onto the projector image plane with sub-pixel precision. In the end, the data projector is then calibrated as a normal camera.

Method for generating an array of 3-D points

Methods, structures and systems for encoding and decoding isosurface data. An encoder process takes volume data and an isolevel as input and produces compressed isosurface data as output. The compressed isosurface data produced by an encoder process is composed of an occupancy image record, an optional intersection points record, and an optional normal vectors record. An occupancy image is compressed with a context-based arithmetic encoder. Compressed isosurface data can be stored in a data storage device or transmitted through a communication medium to a remote computer system, where the decoder process is executed. The decoder processes take compressed surface data as input and produce surface data as output. The decoder processes first reconstructs the occupancy image by decoding the occupancy image record. An in-core isosurface decoder process produces a polygon mesh as a surface representation. An out-of-core isosurface decoder process produces a set of oriented points as a surface representation.

Bi-level iso-surface compression

Methods and apparatus solving problems of polygonal approximations of isosurfaces extracted from uniformly sampled volumes increasing in size due to the availability of higher resolution imaging techniques. The large number of primitives represented hinders the interactive exploration of the dataset. Examples of methods are provided for adaptive isosurface extraction that are generally easy to implement and allows the user to decide the degree of adaptivity as well as the choice of isosurface extraction algorithm. The extraction of the isosurface is optimized by warping the volume. In a warped volume, areas of importance (e.g. containing significant details) are inflated while unimportant ones are contracted. Once the volume is warped, any extraction algorithm can be applied. The extracted mesh is subsequently unwarped such that the warped areas are rescaled to their initial proportions. The resulting isosurface is represented by a mesh that is more densely sampled in regions decided as important.

Volume warping for adaptive isosurface extraction

A method, system, and computer program product for adjusting a unit image area within an input image according to information importance within the unit area. An image receiver configured to receive the input image. An image warper is coupled to an importance map as is configured to generate a warped image such that regions of higher importance in the input image are expanded in the warped image and regions of lower importance in the input image are compressed in the warped image. The importance map is configured to delineate the regions of higher importance and the regions of lower importance in the input image. Texture coordinates may also be warped in a similar manner. Thus, the image is unwarped automatically by modern graphics adapters having texture mapping capabilities.

Space-optimized texture maps

Disclosed are an image editing user interface system and method. The system includes one or more computers with one or more graphical user interfaces, and a receiving process for receiving one or more rendered two dimensional images on the computer graphical user interface. Each two dimensional image represents reflected light from a lit three dimensional object model, and the reflective light at each point of the two dimensional image corresponds to an object point on the three dimensional object model. The system further includes a changing process for changing a portion of the two dimensional image by changing the light intensity at a set of one or more points on the two dimensional image. The change in light intensity at the set of points causes a change in the three dimensional model to correspond to the change in the light intensity.

Method and structure for image-based object editing

A computer system, method, and article of manufacture for shading graphical objects and/or displays is disclosed. A graphical geometric data structure has a plurality of vertex positions defining one or more polygons, typically triangles. In a preferred embodiment, the polygons define a wireframe representation of a geometric object. Each of the vertex positions is associated with one or more sets of vertex color information. A color table has one or more fill colors to be rendered (shaded) between two or more of the vertex positions on a rendering of the geometric object. These colors can uniformly vary between the vertices of the triangle over the entire surface. A substitute color is associated with each of the fill colors so that at least two of the fill colors are associated with the same substitute color.

System, method, and article of manufacture for shading computer graphics

The present invention smoothes a spherical graph signal composed of spherical signal points associated with graph vertices of a graph producing a smoothed spherical graph signal composed of smoothed spherical signal points. Each smoothed spherical signal point is computed by multiplying a vertex rotation matrix by the corresponding spherical signal point. The vertex rotation matrix is computed as a weighted average of neighbor rotation matrices using a local parameterization of the group of rotations. The present invention also filters anisotropically a graph signal composed signal points associated with graph vertices of a graph producing a filtered graph signal composed of filtered signal points. Each filtered signal point is computed as a weighted average of signal points corresponding to the corresponding graph vertices and neighbor graph vertices with neighbor weight matrices. The present invention also denoises the vertex positions of a polygon mesh without tangential drift. The face normals are smoothed on the dual graph of the polygon mesh. The smoothed face normals are used to construct neighbor weight matrices on the primal graph of the polygon mesh. The vertex positions are anisotropically filtered on the primal graph of the polygon mesh. The present invention also filters the vertex positions and face normals of a polygon mesh with interpolatory vertex positions and face normal constraints.

Linear anisotrophic mesh filtering

A method and apparatus are disclosed for finding a triangle mesh that interpolates a set of points obtained from a scanning system. A ball-pivoting algorithm computes a triangle mesh interpolating a given point cloud. The disclosed ball-pivoting algorithm triangulates a set of points by 'rolling' a ball of radius r on the point cloud. The points are surface samples acquired with multiple range scans of an object. The ball-pivoting algorithm starts with a seed triangle, and pivots the ball of a given radius, r, around an edge of the triangle. During the pivoting operation, the ball revolves around the edge while keeping in contact with the edge's endpoints. The ball pivots until it touches another scan point, forming another triangle. The ball-pivoting operation continues until all reachable edges have been tried, and then starts from another seed triangle, until all scan points have been considered.

Growing community of inventors

Providence, RI, United States of America

Gabriel Taubin