Affine movement estimation for object modeling under circular motion

Profile of a 3D object provides rich information about its geometry, and can be used for shape recovery under known camera motion. Model reconstruction has found application in many fields, including medical, entertainment and archeological application. For the last one, 3D digital models can be used for study and restoration of cultural heritage artifact.This paper describes a system which generates a 3D model from a sequence of images under circular motion in the context of archeology.Starting from the silhouettes contours, the algorithm recovers camera motion and constructs the objects visual hull. The technique here described is based on stereo matching of external contours using complete and stable set of affine invariants descriptors. Hence, our system is able to reconstruct the 3D geometry using contour matching and sensors parameters that are previously computed on a calibration step. The algorithm has been implemented in practical way model acquisition system experiments including sensors and turntable and some prototype of real archeological objects.