Fast alignment of 3D geometrical models and 2D grayscale images using 2D distance maps

To create a textured virtual model of a real object, the 3D geometric model that is generally measured by a laser scanner must be aligned with the 2D image that is obtained from image sensors excluding some sensors for which geometric and photometric information are obtained at the same time. One conventional registration method that has been proposed compares the contour lines of the silhouette image of the 3D geometric model and of the 2D image and estimates the relative positions of both according to iterative calculations. However, a method that uses point correspondences of contour points in the 2D image and contour points of the silhouette image must find the nearest neighboring points for each iterative calculation, and the computational cost is high. Therefore, in this paper, the authors propose a new registration algorithm of grayscale images and 3D geometric models by using 2D distance maps that are constructed by using the Fast Marching Method from the boundary of an object on the grayscale image. They also show the effectiveness of the proposed method by performing simulation experiments and experiments using actual images. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 38(14): 5262, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI 10.1002/scj.20634