Turning Mobile Phones into 3D Scanners

Kalin Kolev, Petri Tanskanen, Pablo Speciale, Marc Pollefeys; Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2014, pp. 3946-3953

In this paper, we propose an efficient and accurate scheme for the integration of multiple stereo-based depth measurements. For each provided depth map a confidence-based weight is assigned to each depth estimate by evaluating local geometry orientation, underlying camera setting and photometric evidence. Subsequently, all hypotheses are fused together into a compact and consistent 3D model. Thereby, visibility conflicts are identified and resolved, and fitting measurements are averaged with regard to their confidence scores. The individual stages of the proposed approach are validated by comparing it to two alternative techniques which rely on a conceptually different fusion scheme and a different confidence inference, respectively. Pursuing live 3D reconstruction on mobile devices as a primary goal, we demonstrate that the developed method can easily be integrated into a system for monocular interactive 3D modeling by substantially improving its accuracy while adding a negligible overhead to its performance and retaining its interactive potential.