Fast and accurate 3D shape from focus using dynamic programming optimization technique

The conventional shape from focus (SFF) method for 3D shape recovery from image focus is fast but inaccurate. The SFF method based on the focused image surface (FIS) has shown better results by exhaustive search of the FIS shape using planar surface approximation at the cost of considerably higher computations. We investigate a fast and accurate SFF method. The conventional SFF method is used as a rough estimate for pixels at regular steps in the x and y directions, and this rough estimate is used to search the FIS shape for all pixels between the steps using a dynamic programming optimization technique. The proposed algorithm is very fast and shows comparable results with those of accurate SFF methods.