3D reconstruction of skin surface from photometric stereo images with specular reflection and interreflection

This paper describes a new method for reconstructing the structure of a skin surface replica from three shading images taken from three different lightings. Since the shading images include specular reflections and interreflection, the conventional photometric stereo method is not suitable for reconstructing its surface structure. In the proposed method, the evaluation function of the surface shape is defined, then the structure is reconstructed by optimizing the evaluation using simulated annealing. The experimental results from both synthetic images and real images demonstrate that the proposed method is more effective for shape reconstruction from shading images which include specular reflection and interreflection. © 1999 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 129(3): 51–58, 1999