Shape Recovery using Polarisation and Photometric Stereo
Gary Atkinson (University of the West England)
NICTA SEMINARDATE: 2012-01-06
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: NICTA - 7 London Circuit
CONTACT: JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address.
ABSTRACT:
This talk will be concerned with the use of polarisation information with multi-view lighting to capture 3D surface information. When unpolarised light is reflected from a smooth dielectric surface, it becomes partially polarised. This is due to the orientation of dipoles induced in the reflecting medium and applies to both specular and diffuse reflection. The polarisation state of reflected light is analysed using rotating linear polarisers and then applied to deduce surface normal data, reflectance maps and correspondence for binocular stereo. Furthermore, polarisation is used to enhance the multi-illumination of photometric stereo. The talk will cover the underlying physics of polarisation for computer vision; the methods developed for shape and reflectance analysis; and will touch upon the wider implications of polarisation applications for vision.
BIO:
Gary Atkinson completed an M.Sci. degree in physics at the University of Nottingham in 2003. Upon graduation, he moved to the University of York to study for a PhD degree in the Department of Computer Science, under the supervision of Edwin Hancock in the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition group. His research was concerned with improving shape recovery algorithms and reflectance function estimation for computer vision. Most of his work involved the exploitation of the polarising properties of reflection from surfaces. Gary has been working at the UWE Machine Vision Laboratory on face reconstruction and recognition research in collaboration with Imperial College since June 2007, has been supervising a PhD student on face recognition since November 2008, and on video processing since June 2011. He works in close collaboration with Imperial College London on face recognition and also has ties with the University of Bath, the University of York and the University of Central Lancashire and several industrial partners. In addition to his computer vision research, for which he has published six major international journal papers, Gary has worked in the medical field to develop new means of assessing head deformations of babies affected by plagiocephaly. He hopes to initiate a major new study in this area in the near future. Finally, Gary is working on novel machine vision methods for the automotive sector. In 2010, Gary acted as the UK and Europe co-convener for the International Conference and Exhibition on Biometrics Technology.
