Active Lighting Applied to Shape from Polarization

We present a new way of solving the ambiguity that appears in the shape from polarization method. This ambiguity, concerning the normals orientation of the surface, was previously solved thanks to a propagation algorithm. In this paper, the ambiguity is solved thanks to a special active lighting. This method is less time computing and is more robust to noise acquisition. We first demonstrate how to compute the right normals on the whole surface. Then, we show an application on the 3D reconstruction of a specular metallic object made by stamping and polishing.