Surface reconstruction from sparse fringe contours

A new approach for reconstruction of 3D surfaces from 2D cross-sectional contours is presented. By using the so-called “Equal Importance Criterion,” we reconstruct the surface based on the assumption that every point in the region contributes equally to the surface reconstruction process. In this context, the problem is formulated in terms of a partial differential equation (PDE), and we show that the solution for dense contours can be efficiently derived from distance transform. In the case of sparse contours, we add a regularization term to insure smoothness in surface recovery. The proposed technique allows for surface recovery at any desired resolution. The main advantage of the proposed method is that inherent problems due to correspondence, tiling, and branching are avoided. Furthermore, the computed high resolution surface is better represented for subsequent geometric analysis. We present results on both synthetic and real data