Self-calibrating photometric stereo

We present a self-calibrating photometric stereo method. From a set of images taken from a fixed viewpoint under different and unknown lighting conditions, our method automatically determines a radiometric response function and resolves the generalized bas-relief ambiguity for estimating accurate surface normals and albedos. We show that color and intensity profiles, which are obtained from registered pixels across images, serve as effective cues for addressing these two calibration problems. As a result, we develop a complete auto-calibration method for photometric stereo. The proposed method is useful in many practical scenarios where calibrations are difficult. Experimental results validate the accuracy of the proposed method using various real-world scenes.