Shape from Single Scattering for Translucent Objects

Abstract

Translucent objects strongly scatter incident light. Scattering makes the problem of estimating shape of translucent objects difficult, because reflective or transmitted light cannot be reliably extracted from the scattering. In this paper, we propose a new shape estimation method by directly utilizing scattering measurements. Although volumetric scattering is a complex phenomenon, single scattering can be relatively easily modeled because it is a simple one-bounce collision of light to a particle in a medium. Based on this observation, our method determines the shape of objects from the observed intensities of the single scattering and its attenuation. We develop a solution method that simultaneously determines scattering parameters and the shape based on energy minimization. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by extensive experiments using synthetic and real data.