Planar background elimination in range images: A practical approach

Separating data from objects of interest and background is a common procedure in range images applications. Most of the works presented in the literature use image segmentation, either automatic or supervised, to do that. We present a new method to automatically perform this separation without the need of using complex image segmentation techniques. In our approach, we consider that the object is always scanned over a supporting plane. Then, we assume that there is no information below the plane, and the object data is above it. By projecting all points into the supporting plane normal direction, the points on the plane would project at the same value, the points on the object would be spread with values larger than the plane, and there would be very few values below the plane value (due to noise). This allows us to quickly and reliably eliminate the background data from range images.