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A Fundamental Theorem of Stereo?
S. Baker, T. Sim, and T. Kanade
tech. report CMU-RI-TR-01-07, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, June, 2001.

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The complete set of measurements that could ever be used by a passive 3D vision algorithm is the plenoptic function or light-field. We give a concise characterization of when the light-field of a Lambertian scene uniquely determines its shape and, conversely, when the shape is inherently ambiguous. In particular, we show that stereo computed from the light-field is ambiguous if and only if the scene is radiating light of a constant intensity (and color, etc) over an extended region.

Sponsor: Office of Naval Research
Grant ID: N00014-00-1-0915

Associated center: VASC
Associated lab/group: Human Identification at a Distance
Associated projects: Photometric Limits on Computer Vision and Light-fields

S. Baker, T. Sim, and T. Kanade, A Fundamental Theorem of Stereo?, tech. report CMU-RI-TR-01-07, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, June, 2001.

@techreport{Baker_2001_3753,
   author = "Simon Baker and Terence Sim and Takeo Kanade",
   title = "A Fundamental Theorem of Stereo?",
   institution = "Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University",
   month = "June",
   year = "2001",
   number = "CMU-RI-TR-01-07",
   address = "Pittsburgh, PA"
}