Surface Reconstruction by Coupled Depth/Slope Model with Natural Boundary Conditions

ID
TR-91-24
Authors
Ying Li
Publishing date
November 1991
Length
27 pages
Abstract

This report reports on an IRIS project of reconstructing surface height from gradient. The coupled depth/slope model developed by J.G. Harris has been used and augmented with natural boundary conditions. Experiments have been conducted with emphasis on how to deal with uncertainties about boundary values. Experiments have shown that the reconstructed surfaces are confined to the original shapes if accurate boundary values are given. The algorithm fails to produce correct shapes when inaccurate boundary values are used. Natural boundary conditions are necessary conditions for the problem of variational calculus to be solved. Experiments have shown that natural boundary conditions can be relied upon when no estimations of boundary values can be made, except on occluding boundaries. When relative boundary values of occluding boundaries can be assumed, good reconstruction results can be obtained.