by Holger Schöner, Frank Bauer, Adrian Dorrington, Bettina Heise, Volkmar Wieser, Andrew Payne, Michael J. Cree, Bernhard Moser
Abstract:
Time-of-flight (TOF) full-field range cameras use a correlative imaging technique to generate three-dimensional measurements of the environment. Though reliable and cheap they have the disadvantage of high measurement noise and errors that limit the practical use of these cameras in industrial applications. We show how some of these limitations can be overcome with standard image processing techniques specially adapted to TOF camera data. Additional information in the multimodal images recorded in this setting, and not available in standard image processing settings, can be used to improve reduction of measurement noise. Three extensions of standard techniques, wavelet thresholding, adaptive smoothing on a clustering based image segmentation, and an extended anisotropic diffusion filtering, make use of this information and are compared on synthetic data and on data acquired from two different off-the-shelf TOF cameras. Of these methods, the adapted anisotropic diffusion technique gives best results, and is implementable to perform in real time using current graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware. Like traditional anisotropic diffusion, it requires some parameter adaptation to the scene characteristics, but allows for low visualization delay and improved visualization of moving objects by avoiding long averaging periods when compared to traditional TOF image denoising.
Reference:
Image processing for three-dimensional scans generated by time-of-flight range cameras (Holger Schöner, Frank Bauer, Adrian Dorrington, Bettina Heise, Volkmar Wieser, Andrew Payne, Michael J. Cree, Bernhard Moser), In Journal of Electronic Imaging, volume 21, 2012.
Bibtex Entry:
@article{schoner_image_2012,
title = {Image processing for three-dimensional scans generated by time-of-flight range cameras},
volume = {21},
issn = {10179909},
xurl = {http://spie.org/x648.html?product_id=981660},
doi = {10.1117/1.JEI.21.2.023012},
abstract = {Time-of-flight ({TOF}) full-field range cameras use a correlative imaging technique to generate three-dimensional measurements of the environment. Though reliable and cheap they have the disadvantage of high measurement noise and errors that limit the practical use of these cameras in industrial applications. We show how some of these limitations can be overcome with standard image processing techniques specially adapted to {TOF} camera data. Additional information in the multimodal images recorded in this setting, and not available in standard image processing settings, can be used to improve reduction of measurement noise. Three extensions of standard techniques, wavelet thresholding, adaptive smoothing on a clustering based image segmentation, and an extended anisotropic diffusion filtering, make use of this information and are compared on synthetic data and on data acquired from two different off-the-shelf {TOF} cameras. Of these methods, the adapted anisotropic diffusion technique gives best results, and is implementable to perform in real time using current graphics processing unit ({GPU}) hardware. Like traditional anisotropic diffusion, it requires some parameter adaptation to the scene characteristics, but allows for low visualization delay and improved visualization of moving objects by avoiding long averaging periods when compared to traditional {TOF} image denoising.},
number = {2},
urldate = {2012-06-20},
journal = {Journal of Electronic Imaging},
author = {Schöner, Holger and Bauer, Frank and Dorrington, Adrian and Heise, Bettina and Wieser, Volkmar and Payne, Andrew and Cree, Michael J. and Moser, Bernhard},
year = {2012},
pages = {023012},
annote = {Citation as suggested by {JEI}:
Image processing for three-dimensional scans generated by time-of-flight range {camerasHolger} Schoner, Frank Bauer, Adrian Dorrington, Bettina Heise, Volkmar Wieser, Andrew Payne, Michael J. Cree, and Bernhard Moser, J. Electron. Imaging 21, 023012 (2012), {DOI}:10.1117/1.{JEI}.21.2.023012
Holger Schöner, Frank Bauer, Adrian Dorrington, Bettina Heise, Volkmar Wieser, Andrew Payne, Michael J. Cree and Bernhard Moser, "Image processing for three-dimensional scans generated by time-of-flight range cameras", J. Electron. Imaging 21, 023012 (May 21, 2012); http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/1.{JEI}.21.2.023012},
file = {download/publications/Schoener2012_SPIE_JEI_ImageProcessingTOF.pdf}
}