A novel method for the calibration of an LED-based photometric stereo system

Photometric stereo (PS) is an important 3D reconstruction means in computer vision domain. Traditional PS-based techniques are usually assumed with infinity point light source and parallel lighting directions. In this paper, a PS system is established with some LED lamps, and the calibration method for the near light source is investigated. The shaded image and the spatial geometry of the object are used to estimate the position of the near light source as well as their directions. Real experiments are implemented to demonstrate its feasibility and 3D reconstruction accuracy.