3D reconstruction from a single view of an object and its image in a plane mirror

An arbitrary object and its image in a plane mirror constitute a bilaterally symmetric structure. When the structure is viewed by a single camera, the correspondence between the object and its counterpart in the mirror is auto-epipolar in one image taken by the camera and can be computed in a way similar to that for stereo vision. The 3D structure of the object is therefore recoverable from the single image. In this paper, a 3D-reconstruction algorithm derived from this theory is verified using different objects in front of a mirror observed by a calibrated camera. Very good experimental results are presented. Remarks on tackling the limitation of the present scheme are also given.