Reconstructing ellipsoids from three projection contours

In this paper, a method for reconstructing ellipsoids from three projection contours is described. Line integral projection of an ellipsoid with uniform density is developed to obtain the equation of the projection contour for any projection view. The reconstruction method starts from the estimation of parameters of a projection contour that has elliptic shape. Then an error function utilizing three sets of ellipse parameters estimated in the previous step is minimized to estimate ellipsoid parameters. Simulation and real experiments demonstrate the validity, usefulness and accuracy of the proposed method. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.