Seeing through obscure glass

Abstract

Obscure glass is textured glass designed to separate spaces and "obscure" visibility between the spaces. Such glass is used to provide privacy while still allowing light to flow into a space, and is often found in homes and offices. We propose and explore the challenge of "seeing through" obscure glass, using both optical and digital techniques. In some cases - such as when the textured surface is on the side of the observer - we find that simple household substances and cameras with small apertures enable a surprising level of visibility through the obscure glass. In other cases, where optical techniques are not usable, we find that we can model the action of obscure glass as convolution of spatially varying kernels and reconstruct an image of the scene on the opposite side of the obscure glass with surprising detail. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.