Tridimensional reconstruction by photometric stereo with near spot light sources

In this paper, we propose a method for taking into account lighting conditions for photometric stereo. Indeed, with its classic form, the photometric stereo requires directional light sources and uniform intensity to determine the geometry and albedo of a surface from a reverse illumination model. These constraints are usually not realistic in practice for compact systems, our formulation thus takes account all lighting system properties. We use an iterative process to include the geometry of the surface in the reverse illumination model. Each iteration provides a refined reconstruction and significantly improves the results. Our method does not require a new illumination models and the iteration number is small. It allows to quickly recover geometry and albedo. To evaluate the performance of our method, we compare it to classical photometric stereo by simulation and on real surfaces.