3D area matching with arbitrary multiview geometry

In this article we present a general and robust approach to the problem of close-range 3D reconstruction of objects from stereo correspondence of luminance patches. The method is largely independent on the camera geometry, and can employ an arbitrary number of CCD cameras. The robustness of the approach is due to the physicality of the matching process, which is performed in the 3D space. In fact, both 3D location and local orientation of the surface patches are estimated, so that the geometric distortion can be accounted for. The method takes into account the viewer-dependent radiometric distortion as well. The method has been implemented with a calibrated set of three standard TV-resolution CCD cameras. Experiments on a variety of real scenes have been conducted with satisfactory results. Quantitative and qualitative results are reported.