3D reconstruction of external and internal surfaces of transparent objects from polarization state of highlights

A vision-based method is proposed to measure the 3D shape of external and internal surfaces (not accessible) of smooth transparent objects. Looking at the reflections of point sources on a specular surface with a polarimetric camera, we combine the measurements of two techniques: shape from distortion and shape from polarization. It permits us to recover the position and orientation of the specular surface for each detected point. The internal surface of transparent objects exhibiting as well a specular component, the same technique is used on the highlights coming from the back surface, taking into account the refraction by using polarimetric ray tracing. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America