Target enhanced 3D reconstruction based on polarization-coded structured light

Structured light is a prevailing and reliable active approach of 3D object reconstruction. But complex ambience is undesirable in the measurement because it could cause severe noise and increase computing overhead. In this paper, we propose a structured light coded by spatially-distributed polarization state of the illuminating patterns. The proposed structured light has the advantage of enhancing target in 3D reconstruction by polarization cues. Specifically, this method can estimate the degree of linear polarization (DOLP) in the scene, distinguish target by DOLP and selectively reconstruct it. The coding strategy and the corresponding polarimetric principle are presented and verified by experimental results. As our approach takes advantage of the intrinsic properties of liquid crystal display (LCD) projector and requires no rotation of polarizer, it is effective and efficient for practical applications. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America