3D curve sketch: Flexible curve-based stereo reconstruction and calibration

Interest point-based multiview 3D reconstruction and calibration methods have been very successful in select applications but are not applicable when an abundance of feature points are not available. They also lead to an unorganized point cloud reconstruction where the geometry of the scene is not explicit. The multiview stereo methods on the other hand yield dense surface geometry but require a highly controlled or calibrated setting. We propose and develop a novel framework for 3D reconstruction and calibration based on image curve content, whose output is a 3D curve sketch, an unorganized set of 3D curve fragments. This approach, which is meant to augment the previous approaches, results in a reconstruction of geometric curve structure which can serve as a scaffold on which surface patches can be potentially reconstructed. It is intented for the setting where a number of images are available with coarsely calibrated cameras. The approach operates in two stages. A reliable partial 3D curve sketch is first reconstructed and this is used to refine the cameras to yield a more complete 3D curve sketch in a second stage. A key advantage of this approach is the ability to integrate information across a large number of views. The results have been evaluated on a few datasets.