Online 3D reconstruction using convex optimization

We present a system that is capable of interactively reconstructing a scene from a single live camera. We use a dense volumetric representation of the surface, which means there are no constraints concerning the 3D-scene topology. Reconstruction is based on range image fusion using a total variation formulation, where the surface is represented implicitly by a signed distance function. The final 3D-model is obtained by minimizing a global convex energy and extracting the zero level-set of the solution. The whole reconstruction process is designed to be online. Users can constantly inspect the current reconstruction and adapt camera movement to get the desired amount of detail for specific parts of the reconstructed scene.