3D reconstruction in laparoscopy with close-range photometric stereo

Abstract

In this paper we present the first solution to 3D reconstruction in monocular laparoscopy using methods based on Photometric Stereo (PS). Our main contributions are to provide the new theory and practical solutions to successfully apply PS in close-range imaging conditions. We are specifically motivated by a solution with minimal hardware modification to existing laparoscopes. In fact the only physical modification we make is to adjust the colour of the laparoscope’s illumination via three colour filters placed at its tip. Once calibrated, our approach can compute 3D from a single image, does not require correspondence estimation, and computes absolute depth densely. We demonstrate the potential of our approach with ground truth ex-vivo and in-vivo experimentation.